Each year I shoot the HS Senior Soccer players individually and in a team photo.  The Shoot this year was pretty standard fair with each of the players with the team’s field sign and with their paw print that has their name and number.  Those shots turned out nice but not really out of the ordinary.  Each year we want to do a shot that is memorable and it often turns out, like this year, to be an idea the players come up with during the shoot.

This year was a large group of 12 seniors and we wanted to shoot them all in about an hour.   That was a lot of shots when you consider 12 individuals with the field sign and a group shot with the sign.  12 individuals with their paw print, a “cool” group shot or two and we also needed to do a cover for the Senior night program too.  Talk about packing in a lot in a little time.

The parking lot of the soccer field was flooded from a recent rain.  That meant that some of the paw prints had water either on them or close by and would result in a fair amount of Photoshopping to get rid of the puddles.

The cool group shot was our opportunity to turn lemons into lemonade.  While we were doing individual paw shots the other girls had time to kill  and that when I heard one of them said, “hey, I can see my refection in the water!”  That was the sound of lemonade being made!  As soon as I finished paw shots, we took a look at the puddle and saw she was indeed right she could see herself and we could see the clouds and the blue sky too!  – an picture was getting ready to be born.

The setup for the shot evolved into the result.  The lighting was two SB flashes on stands triggered by the RadioPopper PX system as were all the shots that day.  The lights were crossing and in front of the half circle pointed mostly at the opposite side.

First I started out with them in the half circle at the edge of the water but there was too much background stuff.  Next I went up on the ladder – better, but still too much background stuff.   I had them move deeper into the puddle and it was getting better but still too much stuff in the background.  Then one of the girls said, why not get up on the bleachers – well, duh!  That was the answer – being on the bleaches gave me opportunity to shoot downward at a very steep angle and the reflection of the sky was even better.  The downside was that by the time I figured all this out and we got everyone well into the puddle and the lights ready to go the sun had changed, the clouds were dampening the picture and it just wasn’t as good as I hoped it would be.  It went from a picture that rocks to one that well, “sorta rocks”.  Here is the result.

I was pretty sure I could improve on it though so after the shoot I did some Photoshopping.  I just made an adjustment layer, masked out the players, and brought up the brightness of the puddle and the result is a picture that “Totally Rocks”.   For the poster we added the team name and year at the bottom and a motivational phrase at the top.

So the lesson of this shoot was that listening to the people that you’re shooting give you a whole additional creative resource an sometimes the best shot isn’t the one you planned but rather the one that presented itself and that you listened to.  That is the way you make pictures.

I’ll be doing another post soon on the program cover shot that we made too.  That was also good fun!