There used to be an old saying in Hollywood: “Never work with Kids or Pets!” Occasionally I feel that way with kids. As studio photographers we’ve all had our share of child melt-downs that cause Mom & Dad embarrassment and the need to reschedule a sitting. A recent assignment proved that old Hollywood adage to not be true. I had the opportunity to photograph the Lake County Lightning Lacrosse teams.
The club consisted of boys teams and girls teams ranging from 3rd grade to 8th grade. What a blast working with the kids. First of all their uniforms are blue and yellow. When combined with the green grass, the colors just popped. The kids were into having their portraits taken and there were smiles galore.
When time permitted, there were some opportunities to try some poses that took a little more time to set up. Such was the pose of the players facing into the net. This pose was made easier by using the “live-view” feature and the pivot feature of the LCD screen. I simply lifted the end of the net, then slide the camera into the rear of the net, adjust the display angle, compose the pose using the live-view feature and shoot.
By working with my local pro lab, I was able to use and customize some templates like the “memory-mate” composite. This allowed combining a player portrait with a team photo into one print. Lacrosse is not as popular as baseball, football or soccer. So the background for the memory-mate print needed to be created from scratch. By borrowing some props from one of the coaches, the custom background could be laid out and shot on a nice sunny day.
The magazine cover shot was a matter of thinking up a magazine title and making up some feature article titles around the player image. The article titles were geared towards the players and were fun to think up. I look forward to this assignment next year and already have some ideas to change things up a bit.
