Gersh Photo Post | Max Gersh | Multimedia Photojournalist

The sports department has kept me busy recently. On top of regular feature stories here and there, the paper is running articles on the players of the year from each sport. I’ve shot so many sports portraits that I tried to coin the phrase “sportrait.” (Don’t forget my underwater portrait of the two swimmers or the group shot of wrestlers.)

Unfortunately, it only takes a quick Google search to see that I was not the first to be so clever.

I’m fortunate that I get to do all of my sportraits as environmental portraits. I have a tremendous amount of leeway in how I shoot it.

There are a few things I look for when doing an environmental portrait.

1. Dynamic lighting
2. Clean or purposely integrated background
3. Something that ties the subject to their sport or profession
4. Probably some other stuff that I notice subconsciously

That being said, sometimes that isn’t so easy to do.

Many of the locations I’ve been shooting at are indoors in a cluttered room. I have a few options. I can either overpower the ambient light with my own lighting or alter my shooting angle to fill the background with a clean area of wall, floor or ceiling. Or in some cases, both techniques used in tandem work best.

In a recent portrait of a swimmer, I stood on a bench and shot at a slight downward angle with my 70-200mm lens to compress the subject, William Kelsik, against the pool in the background.

The free space to the left provided a nice balance of negative space and gave the ambiance of a pool because it is a pool. When it went to print, we used that area to run the beginning of the story.

On another outing, I was sent to photograph former Tri High coach Don Schwarzkopf.  The school school board had voted to rename the gym after him. Great. I’ll get a shot of him in the gym.

It’s never that easy.

Of course, there were multiple activities on the court. Instead, I went to the upper deck of the seating which was halfway compressed (collapsible bleachers compressed for storage) and left maybe two feet of room to work side to side.

I tried to frame him the best I could with his sectional championship banners in the background.

No matter how much I want to be in control of every portrait I shoot in terms of lighting, apparel and location, I can’t always have it my way.

For almost a week, I had a scheduled portrait set up with Shenandoah High School’s star diver, Kate Hillman. I showed up on time with all of my equipment. I went to the school’s office and had them page her.

When she came in and saw me with my gear, she said “Oh my gosh. It’s Tuesday, isn’t it!”

Yes it was. And she had locked her keys and swim apparel in her car. Oh well.

The original idea for the portrait was to have her in her swim gear in the halls of the school. Shenandoah doesn’t have a pool for her to practice in so she drives to a pool nearly half an hour away. We wanted to illustrate a swimmer without a pool.

Instead, I just posed her in the halls of the school as she was.

I wanted a backup option for this shoot. Since I couldn’t have any swim gear or a pool, I wanted something that had the schools name on it. We headed to the gym. At center court, the name Shenandoah wraps around in an arc.

This image clearly wasn’t as strong of a portrait as the first but I always like to have multiple options to present.

My latest shoot has definitely been my most difficult. A portrait of a gymnast. The problem is that I know very little about gymnastics and I am not sure how to best make an image that represents the sport and the subject.

I spent quite a bit of time with the subject, Ashlan Millikan, to ensure I made satisfactory images.

At first, I had her practice parts of her floor routine while I had my light aimed at her. As she interacted with it, I fired.

I knew an image like this was usable but I was not satisfied. I wanted something more dynamic. We headed over to the beam.

She began to practice parts of her routine. When I saw something that I thought might work, I had her do it a few times to insure I had a sharp image.

This ended up being the lead art for the sports page.

I wanted to have a backup image so I took a photograph that was more portrait-esque. That image ended up running as secondary art.

Like I said, I’ve been busy.

Most of these images were lit with my DIY Beauty Dish. The light was set up on a stand and fired by Pocket Wizard.

Ever since I discovered what a beauty dish was, I’ve wanted one. The problem is that I don’t have any strobes to use one on. My lighting is limited to a single Canon Speedlight (shoe mounted flash).

How could I produce the look of a beauty dish with my one Speedlight?

Simple. Build a beauty dish to fit.

I’m not the most handy of the handymen. Therefore, instead of designing the dish on my own, I Googled other peoples designs and copied it. I ended up using the one I found on David Tejada’s blog. His looks better (and probably works better too but that is yet to be determined) but I gave it a good effort.

To get most of the parts, I visited Home Depot. The main “dish” is a plastic terracotta planter. I wanted to find a relatively shallow one that was 14″ across but they didn’t have any that size. I ended up getting a deeper one that is about 12″ across.

Next, I headed over to the gutter section. I was looking for what is called a drop out or outlet (I think). While David used a metal one, the only one that fit my Canon 550EX was a plastic one. It doesn’t really make much difference. If you are planning on doing this, bring your Speedlight with you to check the fit.

I then headed to the paint section. I bough a can of flat black spray paint and a can of glossy white spray paint. I figured the gloss might help the light reflect. Maybe not.

After leaving Home Depot, I went to the auto parts store and got a 3 3/4″ blind spot mirror.

When I got home, I began building. I traced the outline of the gutter outlet onto the bottom of the dish. I used a Dremel to cut it out because I could. I imagine a sharp knife would work just as well.

I then also cut the same shape out of the bottom of a CD spool. A little bit of hot glue later, and the dish, the bottom of the CD spool and the gutter outlet were one.

I then spray painted the inside of the dish white and the outside black. I didn’t want an orange dish.

I glued a CD to the inside top of the CD spool. On top of that, I placed that blind spot mirror.

The light will be firing through the back of the dish, which is also firing into the bottom of the CD spool. The light shoots straight at the mirror which spreads it back around the dish which in turn lights the subject.

I haven’t had an opportunity to test it on a person yet. The one thing I am concerned about is the direction of the light. This is what I would describe as a “shotgun beauty dish.” Its depth makes it a directional light modifier. I am concerned that it wont wrap a subject with light as beauty dishes are known to do.

Just from popping off a few test frames, I have noticed that I do lose about two stops of light.

Hopefully this weekend I will have an opportunity to further test it and see if this is something worth keeping. As soon as I find a wider and shallower planter, I will probably build another one.

This entire build cost me just over $20 but I already had a CD spool.