This was a fun photoshoot that I did with UCI Track star Charles Jock. I went out looking for a cool location to shoot and came across the UCI boiler room for all the water that is distributed throughout the campus. I went in and told them that I wanted to use the facility for an athlete photoshoot and they said it was ok, so a few hours later I came back with all my equipment and a few assistants. It was a pretty cool location to shoot because it was industrial, unique, and there weren’t any disturbances. The place was really loud and I was pretty much shouting the whole time, but there were very few workers actually in the space and the ones that were there just worked around us like we weren’t even there.

Check out the behind the scenes video below!

Charles Jock Photoshoot (May 24, 2010) from Scott Roeder on Vimeo.

5/23/10 – Irvine, CA – UC Irvine freshman Pratik Panda gets in the right mindset as he poses for a portrait.

On the same day as the fencing photoshoot, I also had another photoshoot. Once again I wanted to shoot something unique that doesn’t usually get much recognition. I have always loved playing ping pong and for part of this past year it got pretty big in my dorm between a few of us. I have always seen photos of actual ping pong matches but had never shot one myself so I attempted to create the perfect illustration. I set up a backdrop behind the table, two lights from the sides and big soft box right above my head. After some spray on sunscreen, water, and natural sweat, we were able to get a nice glistening on the skin. This photoshoot was prompted by the 2010 UCI Photolympics.

We even tested out spraying water into the shot, which had potential but didn’t work out.

My friend and fellow photographer Lee was there to help me set up equipment and also stand in as a test subject.

5/23/10 – Irvine, CA – Jessica Enriquez keeps her eye on the ball during the ping pong photoshoot for the 2010 UCI Photolympics.

I usually like to get both a female and male subject for most of my photoshoot sometimes one might just look more natural than the other. I think Panda looked a little more natural and fierce in his photo but I still liked this one too.

Below is a shot of the kids from the dorm who came out to help.

5/23/10 -  Irvine, CA – UC Irvine Fencing team member Alex Helmintoller poses for a portrait.

When the 2010 UCI Photolympics were happening I knew that I definitely wanted to enter the max amount of photos in the portraits category. I like shooting athletes and I wanted to do something unique. Luckily Alex from my dorm was on the fencing team at UCI and was willing to help me out with my photoshoot. He brought all his gear and we headed out late one night to shoot these photos. I also wanted to get a female subject wearing the outfit just to see what it would look like, so Jaclyn Wang also accompanied us on the shoot. The photos of Alex and Jaclyn both turned out great, but I could only select one to submit so I went with the one of Alex. Below is the shot of Jaclyn, along with a shot of our crew for the night.

Nikon D3, 70-200mm @ 34mm, 500iso, f/2.8, 1/180, manual

UCI Men’s Basketball guard Michael Hunter poses for a quick photo before warming up to play UC Riverside.

While he was gone I set up one softbox in the narrow hall where the locker rooms are. I didn’t have much room to work with and I wanted to keep it simple. I had two photographers, Lee and Rashmi, helping me setup. In the photo below, Rashmi stands in and tries out a few poses.

Nikon D3, 70-200mm @ 35mm, 500iso, f/2.8, 1/180, manual

About an hour before the game Michael came back to the Bren Events Center and everything was already set up. I already had the pose decided and all he had to do was stand in. I did the first shot with just his street clothes on.

Nikon D3, 70-200mm @ 34mm, 500iso, f/2.8, 1/180, manual

After a few shots, he went into the locker room and changed into his uniform. When he came back out we took a few more shots. This is the shot that ran in the paper, although I liked the previous one a little better.

Nikon D3, 70-200mm @ 35mm, 500iso, f/2.8, 1/180, manual

Check out the slide show below…

I was so busy with other stuff leading up to Shocktoberfest that I didn’t really get to put as much effort into shooting the dunk contest as I wanted to. I had my strobes back in the Bren and I had one remote camera set up on the top of the shot clock. It wasn’t the best choice, and actually a pretty bad choice. Once again I am reminded not to rely on my remote camera. Anyways, below are some photos of my assistants Ryon Tanara, Pratik Panda, and Ian Massey.

This last weekend I shot volleyball players from UCI, Argentina, Netherlands and Korea. I was trying to replicate this Power Rangers poster below:

I shot it in one of the gyms with all the lights out. It was big enough of a room so that the light would not spill out far enough to hit any walls. I knew that I would need a relatively soft light to light the main part of the players faces. For the main soft light I angled it so that the light would fall off on the face and fade to black. Then I used an additional light more to the left of the camera and set to a higher power, to give more of an outline on the edge of the face.

I shot each player individually and then merged the photos later in photoshop. One thing I did not intend to have was the shadow cast on the players faces from the nose. It was from the more powerful light that I used to outline the players from the side. Hopefully I can learn of a better angle to place that light in order to cut down on that specific shadow.

Below is a group shot that I took with one player from each team together. I needed to take a back-up photo just in case the other photos didn’t turn out as planned.

I had a lot of fun just messing with the lighting on this shoot. It was pretty simple but it showed fundamental ways to manipulate light.