Earlier in the year I was booked for a portrait shoot with Olivia McTaggart, an Auckland based Pole Vault athlete. The shoot was booked to take place at AUT Millennium in the North Shore. Its a great venue for anyone into their sports or anyone just keeping fit. As it turned out its also a great place for a photographic portrait shoot.
I loved having the track lines at AUT to use as compositional elements in the images.
Olivia was able to give me two hours of her time in between her pretty full on training schedule which is fantastic. The two hours enabled me to play around with a variety of setups and create a bunch of different looks, all within the same area of AUT.
I love how the portrait above conveys a sense of the hard work, and time required by an athlete be at the top of their sport. Theres a strip light to the images right for the highlights on Olivias side and a main light for her front and left hand side. I didn’t light the background and let it fall away to give the image some drama.
On approach, in mid air. Keeping focus on Olivia while she was hurtling towards me, and making sure she was in the sweet spot for my flashes was a tricky mix. It was definitely worth the effort for the end result though.
Olivia was really great to work with, happy to try a bunch of different setups and ideas. I like this image with its spot of light bringing attention to the athlete and the line of the pole and relation of it to Olivias eyes creating a little story within the image.
A few closer up portraits of Olivia showing her sporting focus
I asked Olivia to really engage with the lens and imagine it was something blocking her way to achieving her goals. I wouldn’t want to be in her way, but I love the intensity her stare gives these two portraits. FOCUS OF AN ATHLETE!
Just thought I had better include a smiling shot of Olivia, she was really great to work with. Athlete portraits don’t have to be super serious and dramatic 🙂
Sometimes on a shoot you just turn around and spot an image in the making. I saw Olivia adjusting her hair during the shoot and I knew straight away there was an image in it. I asked her to do it again after I had adjusted the lights a little. Glad we did, as it made an image with a different feel giving the client options. This is still one of my favourite images of the shoot.
The client really wanted some images of Olivia involving movement. Makes sense I guess after all this is a portrait shoot of an athlete. Heres Olivia taking her run up before a jump. Super tricky to time the focus and lighting with such a shallow depth of field.
I like this portrait of Olivia. It’s not a particularly sporty portrait, but the lines from the pole and track markings work well together along with the direction she is looking.
And just to finish off this post like I started heres another of Olivia with a clean blue background. I prefer the image at the start of this post with its strong leading lines but hey this ones a good alternative.
I really enjoyed this shoot. Because time wasn’t a factor we were able to create a large mix of image styles and looks. Olivia was great to work with especially considering her heavy athletic training schedule.
Some other sporty portrait blog posts
If you want to see some more examples of athlete portraits check out these two posts. They are about shoots I completed of Mitch Larkins and also Emily Seebohm in Australia.
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