My quest to shoot more people images took me to my other life long passion of football with some ideas that had been simmering in my head for a while.
As a follower of Yeovil Town F.C (and photographer for The Yeovil Town Community Sport Trust) I decided to produce a shoot with a couple of suitable models against an appropriate stadium backdrop.
As my photography vision/style of work is mostly about quiet moments I decided my main images would not be action packed aggressive images of footballers competing but ones that where more about moments & emotions of the game.
My first job was to source my models.Having spent many years testing for model agencies in Bristol I still had several contacts to call upon but in the end I was contacted by a couple of models via a post I made online.
The Models Chris & Daniel where both medical students who also did modelling part time and where perfect for what I had in mind so a date was set to do the shoot.
During the next week I purchased a few items of kit and managed through my stylist to borrow some appropriate shirts and we were all set to go.
I had some images on file to use for the stadium backdrops although I did look at purchasing some stock images but as usual I really wanted to shoot or use my own to keep complete control over the image so decided against it.
What I knew would be needed to be shot was some floodlit grass to complement my vision of a night time floodlit football stadium.
Luckily my son trains twice a week in the Development Centres that Yeovil run and one of the locations had some ideal floodlit grass so I managed to capture what I needed while avoiding the Javelin training that had set up while my back was turned !
So with all my background elements collected all that was left was to work out the lighting and capture my models.
For this shoot I needed very particular lighting style to give the impression of stadium lighting so I decided my best bet was to set up in my studio at The Monks Yard.
Although a fairly simple lighting set up I decided to use our biggest studio space to allow plenty of room to control the precise quality of light I required for the images.
Chris & Daniel where very professional and took direction superbly and we soon moved through several variations and close ups.

To create the beads of sweat on the models skin I used a water mister (kind you use to water plants or spray at the wife !) with a drop of Glycerine in it.
To finish off the day we decided to do a few action shots on location in the park which gave me some naturally lit images to play with if I decide to do so.

Here is the first completed image from the set featuring Daniel…more to follow shortly…

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