Kandidz Photography Blog
My agent Ronald Bolden found us a new client last week in American Basketball Association’s East Bay Pit Bulls. After meeting on Monday we sketched out a tentative shoot schedule and some collateral needs for re-branding the team. However right as we were wrapping up, the team’s owner Debra received a call from the New York Times saying they were running a story on the league and would like to get more info on her team. So I told Debra to find out when the story would run and if we needed to move up the delivery dates, let me know. The owner left and I told Ron, “The article is gonna run this weekend I betcha. And we are going to have to shoot new photos at Wednesday’s practice (the day before Thanksgiving).” Not even an hour later, the owner informed us the story would run this Friday.
I loaded the car Wednesday evening and headed to the gym. We were originally told that we could start at 9pm and the practice ran until 11. So at 7:30pm I arrived with the expectation that I would set up and by the time they got up a sweat, I would be ready to shoot. Well like the saying says “the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry”. The update was that practice starts at 9pm and the gym is full of members until 9pm so no prep prior. Also we have to be out of the building at 11pm sharp…everyone! So with 90 minutes to spare, I fired up Yelp and found a Sushi restaurant to grab a bite and come up with plan B.
Upon returning to the facility at 8:45pm, I loaded my cart and began setup. Using the interior walls as giant bounces I directed two Profoto strobes at them to illuminate the gym without firing lights directly at the athletes scrimmaging. After taking about an hours worth of action shots, I set up on the other side of the gym for portraits. There was no time to erect a backdrop and we could not turn off the horrible yellow gym lights so we did the next best thing. I set up the camera so that the exposure would result in a near pitch black room. Then I set up a simple one Profoto light in a soft box setup with enough power to overcome the camera’s settings and light the subject. I quickly took the three star players images during the times they sat out of the scrimmage and was done by 10:40pm. Ron helped me tear down and we rolled out of the building at 11:00pm on the dot.
Markup of original image
Now I view a lot of commercial and amateur photography and one of the biggest differences is the editing/post processing. My favorite photography quote is “Stop taking pictures and start making pictures”. Most amateurs and viewers have no idea what is involved in creating a final image. As you can see in the original this is a rush, on location shot but that is no excuse to not MAKE a great picture. Would I have loved to stop the scrimmage behind him and turn off the lights…absolutely. But we are short on time and high on expectations. So we create an image that has the essential elements I have in my head and then I will perfect it in Lightroom and Photoshop.
While I am not going to go into exhaustive detail I have include the original, markup (which I never do on paper like this unless I am working with an Art Director. I can see and remember all the fixes in my head as I am a very visual person) and final image. In general I enter Lightroom and execute the easy adjustments like
Then I take this pre-edited image into Photoshop where I do the heavy lifting of highlights, shadow, curves, sharpening, vignetting, liquifying, color replacement and more. To achieve:
This along with the other pictures in the series such as…
are the start of new image for the East Bay Pit Bulls. We are hoping to generate public interest in these young men’s stories with new stills, logos, properties and the video documentaries also being created. Stay tuned 
