Fitness Zone Photoshoot
Fitness Zone Shoot - Sony A77
On 20 September 2012 I was hired to do a photo shoot at Fitness Zone in Klerksdorp for advertising purposes. One of the photos would also be selected as the cover for the October edition of WOW Magazine. I had consulted with management of Fitness Zone earlier in the week to get an idea of what they were looking for. During the consultation I was shown a few photos from various fitness magazines and I quickly found the look and feel they were after.
The gym has good lighting, but they wanted the background to appear darkened while having a good light focus on the subjects. We would be shooting during normal, though quieter, working hours so members of the gym may appear in the background, but had to be darkened out. To achieve the look they required I realized I would have to use rim and kicker lighting on small aperture and low ISO values and then use strong but diffused key lighting from a softbox.
Since I would be shooting amongst normal gym equipment I opted for a smaller 45cm X 60cm Single Softbox as key light and 2 bare flashes for kicker and rim lighting effects to the background.
I shot with the Sony A77 fitted with a Sony SAM 28-75 f/2.8 lens at f/8, Shutter 1/125 and ISO200 (full manual mode). Shots at these settings with existing lighting (no flash) would be quite dark, which is what I needed. I then went about setting up the key light first till I got the exposure I wanted and then did the rim and kickers individually till the effect resembled what they had shown me in the magazines. When I showed the customer the first test shots they were immediately happy with the look and we continued shooting. We did some group shots to create a shot for the cover of the WOW Magazine and then proceeded with some individual shots with various pieces of gym equipment which would be used in their advertising campaign.
The models were all great and the resulting shots showed great form. Placing the key light at various angles and raised slightly above the models creates softened shadows which really brings out the toning in muscles and the body. Posing gym photos was also much easier than I expected as the models simply need to use equipment as they normally would in any gym. It is up to you as photographer to find the angle from which the model would look their best while using any of the gym equipment.
Details for the gym:
Fitness Zone
General Manager: Chris van Niekerk
Corner of Austin & Williams Street
Wilkoppies
Klerksdorp
South Africa
Telephone: 018 468 7744
Fax: 086 665 4140
