It has been quite a while since I spent a week in Leicester, working alongside the Special Olympic Games for my personal portrait project.
During which time, I have befriended with a wonderful group of talented and hard working guys. On the last day of the week-long games, I was thrilled when I was asked by Gurdeep, who was in charge of the media team, to do a group portrait of volunteer photographers and film crew.
The closing ceremony was held in Abbey Park, a rather big area with lots of “green” in sight. My first thought was a hill, to elevate my subjects and give them almost heroic statue. But the park was almost flat, and hills were hidden inside the woods, it was impossible to include the sky, which I wanted for extra drama to add to the frame. Since “flatness” is abundant, it would be silly not to use it.
Given the windy weather and increasing number of spectators showing up in the background, I ditched the idea of using any light modifier and opted for the hard light (can’t afford sand bags yet …).
One Elinchrom camera left, high up in the air, angled down for the main light with a reflector to control spill; another Elinchrom was set up as backlight, bare bulb to maximise the spread. Both were powered up pretty much to the max so I can underexpose the sky a little.
Those guys were so easy to work with and everyone was great at posing, needless to say, I had a great ten minutes of fun to bag this shot. Click on the image to see a large version.
special olympic games media team
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