IMPACT Magazine is celebrating their 20th anniversary this month. i had the pleasure of shooting the workout feature for their anniversary issue, Sept/Oct 2011. it’s a pleasure to have been working with Elaine and her team for over the past four years. a huge congratulations goes out to them on this 20th anniversary.

the workout featured the expertise and incredible body of Rob Williams, president of the Williams Health Group in Vancouver. i must say this was the most involved shoot i have done for IMPACT so far. Rob had sent me a few ideas of what he was thinking for the shoot, and i was fully on board with them; darker and contrasty to define the muscles and body shape. Rob is probably one of the most ripped athletes i’ve photographed, i joked with him that his muscles were casting their own shadows and that they were giving me a hard time.

[images, tear sheets and lighting setup after the jump]

the location for the shoot was a MMA gym; fantastic space. i chose to shoot in front of the sparing ring to give the image some context. in total six strobes lit Rob; two umbrellas camera right and camera left were the key lights, a diffused ring light was just above the camera acted as the fill to get under Rob, two gridded strobes were to the right and left of his legs, and a SB-900 was placed in the rafters at the back to light the background just a bit (you can see it in some of the pictures). the lighting setup took sometime to get right. i still think the background SB-900 could have been brighter to light up more of the background and kill some of the shadows, but time was starting to turn against us. we shot 6 different variations for the workout, one with me sitting high above to get a shot of Rob pouncing over a straight line.

i think the images turned out pretty good. in post i desaturated and cooled the images. lately i’ve been fond of separating the post of the subject and the surrounding. it allows more control over the subject’s overall color and contrast to the surroundings, and vise-versa. oh, and i finally was able to use the diffusion material on my soft-light reflector for the ring light. it almost creates a beauty dish type of light, though with that wrapping effect that a ring light has. it’ll be interesting to use it as a key light.

Plan A was good. the article Jon wrote for IMPACT magazine centered around gaining better posture for cyclist. the workout described seemed most suited for a gym stretch area, maybe after a weight session. Plan A involved a small workout area, strobes, softboxes; well thought out, planned, ready to go. what i didn’t count on when i arrived on location was how small the workout area was. the shoot was scheduled in the evening, and the rain had not let up for weeks it seemed. shooting inside was my best chance to get the images shot for the deadline.

after about half an hour of pondering the small crowded workout area, the thought of rescheduling the shoot for the next day in a larger area was becoming reality. Plan B, what was Plan B? Plan B was staring at me from across the street in the rain; a stadium. looking from a second story window the huge flood lights gave the stadium a nice glow against the dark sky. and because it was raining, the wet bleachers reflected the light right back into the stadium. i took a quick run over to see if it was open to the public and to do a quick scout. it looked good. Plan B involved bagging my speedlights and Pocketwizards, putting my hood up and making sure i didn’t short-circuit anything.

[lighting setup and tear sheets after the jump]

the stadium floods were bright enough that i could gain some ambient from them if i shot at a high enough ISO. i landed at ISO 1600, 1/60 at f/8. a SB-800 with the diffuser down was my key light, camera left. the rim light was a SB-900 zoomed out to 200mm placed up in the bleachers behind Jon, camera right. the exposure gave me a fairly neutral image. enough to give me good detail at both ends without much clipping (other than the dark sky).

in post, i exposed a plate for the stadium and then one for Jon. blended the two together in Photoshop, increased the highlights on Jon to match the burst of light from the SB-900, cleaned up all of the rain, and set the tone of the image.

i must admit, Plan B turned out way better than Plan A would ever have. something about thinking on your toes that gets the create juices going. though, i can’t say enough about being prepared for a project, planning and doing your research on what you need to shoot. but when something sends your plans into left-field you have to be flexible enough to find a solution that works. this time around, the solution was better than the plans.

here are the tear sheets from the May/June IMPACT magazine.

for you strobists out there, this shoot was almost 100% natural light. for the most part a reflector was all that was used to create fill, and on the last set in the alley a SB900 was fired behind the model to create some separation when shooting against the dark wall (which were left out of the editorial).

i’m also finally on the video bandwagon! with all of the retouching i’ve been doing, i thought i might as well record my work and put together a little workflow and technique video. basically condensed 5 and a half hours of editing into just under 6 minutes. it’s a bit of a manic video, but i bring you through 2 techniques for retouching skin so that it’s perfect and maintains detail.

IAN SHEH VID: beauty retouching

here are a couple of behind-the-scenes pictures from the shoot.