I actually won!

If you are like me, you like to see how your work compares to the rest of the world, so you enter online photography contests, just to see where you stand. I enter contests for that reason and I like to hear feedback about my work as well to see how I can improve. I look at all feedback seriously and even though I may not agree with it, it is still good to hear it. This time around I entered the Rock My Shot contest and this month's theme was In-Studio Portraits. Since I shoot 70% of the time in the studio, I felt this was right up my alley! Now, the hard part was deciding which shot I wanted to enter. Looking back through my work, I always love the color gelled work. Then I found this one of the amazing August Glubke during a fitness session we did a few years back. This was such a fun shoot and although the idea is not an original one, I decided to give it a whirl myself. I believe I got the inspiration from Tim Tadder an amazing fitness photographer.

For my lighting, I decided to use three lights; a gridded beauty dish on camera axis and two gelled strobes on either side with just basic reflector dishes. The fun thing to remember when using gels is that the white light takes precedence and gels will only color the shadows. Since the gridded beauty dish creates a spotlight look, I just had to make sure that it was positioned properly at the apex of her jump. My beauty dish was on a boom, so I was seated below the light with my wide angle lens.

On the pose, I had her get into the pose and then all she had to do was jump straight up. We made little corrections to her arms and hands as well as feet position, but in the end she really nailed it. We were actually able to capture a few more jumps before it exhausted her. Fitness modeling can be very tiring!

On the editing, I basically had to remove a electrical socket at the bottom of the shot, crop out the floor and extend the background in photoshop. Very little work was done to her skin since she already has great skin.

Overall, I am just happy to have my work recognized by others in the industry. I think it's important to put yourself out there and really get feedback to improve your craft. If you are really serious about improving your craft, entering contests where you get feedback is truly important and can help you grow in leaps and bounds (see what I did there! LOL!).