How Bryce France photographed Atlanta United player portraits

Back in January I had the opportunity to shoot player portraits for Atlanta United. I was excited and nervous about this shoot because it was my first big client. The goal was to capture dramatic portraits of each player. After talking to the creative director we came up with two ways of shooting each player so that we had a variety of images to work with.

The first setup we had 3 Paul C Buff Einstein lights. The 2 lights on the side were kicker lights to add some edge lighting to the player. One had  a gold gel while the other was bare. The key light was Einstein with very tight 10 degree grid.



The second light setup was a one light setup. Basically just a large beauty dish above 45 degrees about the player's head with a sock over to soften the light.



One of my favorite backdrops to use is a large cut of black velvet. The velvet absorbs the light hitting it, making it this really interesting black void behind the subject. It makes it look like the talent is stepping out of the shadows into the light. My backdrop was a cut of about 3 1/2 yards from a local Hobby Lobby.



My camera setup was a Canon 5d mark 3 with a 24-70 2.8 Sigma Art lens. I used this nifty bracket on my hot shoe so I could run my Case Air from Tether Tools and Pocket Wizard trigger at the same time. The Case Air system was super helpful in showcasing in real time the images to the creative director and the players. Tethering over wifi minimizes the amount of chords that this lighting setup already had running everywhere and made the iPad very mobile.




This article and all the images were originally published on brycefrance.com  and shared with his permission

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