The Ladder to Success

I was faced with a dilemma recently: how do you photograph a tennis player differently than everyone else does?  Tennis takes place on the ground, on a standard sized court, in daylight.  Usually.  That is, unless you fly over Arthur Ashe Stadium in NY in the evening and get to see the US Open Tennis Championships from 800 feet in the air, like I did last night.  I swear I could hear Maria Sharapova grunting from that high up.

Kayla is a Rush-Henrietta high school senior who plays tennis.  When she came to my studio, and I felt like I owed her something different…something that no one else had.  It required a change of perspective…a different point of view.  After photographing her near the net in different standing and sitting poses, I brought out a new weapon: an 8 ft. step ladder.

I placed her on the baseline, as if she were ready to serve to a loudly grunting opponent.  I placed her on the side of the court with her back to the sun, and placed a small soft box outfitted with a battery-powered Quantum strobe in front of her to light up her face.  I placed the ladder about 4 ft. away from her and climbed to the top.  Both her and her mother thought I was crazy.  Moreso because I was doing it with a broken foot.  I wasn’t crazy.  I was getting a different point of view.

In sports magazines, you routinely see photos of a basketball game that were taken from a camera attached to the rafters, shooting down to the basket.  How many tennis photos do you see from that vantage point?  None.  There are no rafters on a tennis court, so I improvised.

Armed with a wide angle lens, I had her serve 5-6 times to get the timing that I wanted.  I took the best photo and cleaned it up a bit, as the court was old and some of the color of the court had faded. 

There you go, a view you don’t normally see.  Don’t be afraid to get up high, get down low, or look at a subject in a totally different way than you ever thought possible.  You might just get something unique and very interesting.