Haristobald Photography: Getting in shape in DC!

Graham King is personal trainer in Washington DC. Cross fit, boot camp and other physical training has no secret for him.

We had the chance to meet in Washington DC during our last trip in the US. He maried Carolina, good friend of us already subject of this blog. They gently hosted us during our stay in DC.

We had the ~~courage~~ chance to train with Graham one day, early in the morning. He was so motivating during the training that we only understood the next day that he killed our arms, legs and abs. No, realy, it was fun training with him, the guy trully knows his job and how to make people pushing their own limits.

Not only to thank him for hosting us but also because he realy is an interesting person, I asked Graham to take the pose for my canon G10 and my new lumopro LP 160 speedlights.

I only had twoo speedlights, one camera stand, an umbrella and a snoot to shoot Graham. When in travel you always have to make cruel decision by leaving most of your gear at home. Actually its pushing your creativity behind his limits. You can't prepare your shooting either. In a journey you have to take the opportunities and do it with the material you have with you.

For the top post picture, I used one LP 160 on stand with an shoot thru umbrella and 1/4 CTO as main light. The other LP 160 is placed behind Graham camera right.

The walls of the gym gave a lot of reflections and that's not always a bad thing. You just have to handle specular light. In this case, the umbrella's reflections alowed me to have a separation between the background and the right side of the wheel. I also used specular light to light the hudge wheel. To do that you just need to pay attention to the reflection angle of the light. Most of it has to be sent right to the lens. The other thing is to flag the flash to avoid any flare.

This second picture has kind of the same setup with the same attention to the specular light. But for this one I wanted reflection but no burned highlight, I still needed details on the weight disc. You see at the shadow that I'm not right in the flash's direction. I kind of moved to the right to avoid direct reflection.

For the next picture I asked Graham to sit on the floor, holding a kettlebell in front of him. The kettlebell is one of the emblematic gear crossfitterq use. I wanted him to hold it like a precious object. He's looking at me like "don't even think about touching that bell, you don't know what I'm capable of"!

A blue gelled LP 160 was placed behind him, zoomed to 50 mm to light the wall with the right triangle shape. The main light still is an LP160 soot thru a wescott umbrella.