When I apporached Drew with the idea of capturing him doing a scissor kick, he said, "Sure, let's do it!"
But wait a minute, Drew, it's not going to be that easy. Or is it? I set up two studio lights: one a White Lightning 1600 in an Apollo soft box to camera right, to light up his left side; and a Quantum T2 flash to camera left to light up his right side. I positioned myself where I would get him in mid-air against the stadium seats and press box, with the two lighting standards in view. His mother tossed the ball in mid air, and he executed the most perfect scissor kick. Well, I have to assume it was perfect, because when I pressed the shutter button, the camera's mirror flipped up at precisely the exact time he was kicking the ball, thus blocking my view through the viewfinder.
When I looked at the image immediately afterwards on the camera's LCD, I couldn't beleive that it all came together on the first take: great lighting, excellent jump, great timing, and a perfect look on his face. One take. One take and move on.
Drew has a huge collection of sneakers and cleats, because he doesn't seem to grow out of any of them any more. I thought a photo of him laying in a pile of foot ware would be a uniquely colorful image.
Drew was the first tennis player I had the opportunity to photograph after conceiving the idea for this photo. I dusted the back half of a tennis ball with baby powder, then had him launch it with a forehand. The powder had to be lit from behind in order for it to stand out from the black background, so I placed two studio lights left and right behind him to light up the dust cloud. A gridded flash was used to light his face to show the detail.
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