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Brent McMahon – Vancouver’s Ironman – Portrait Session
September 17, 2016
The thrill of competition in professional sports has but a single purpose; to declare a winner. Competitions most basic concept, particularly in the realm of individual sport is about winning – period. Not be forgotten there is of course a loser that is commonly referred to as second place.
An athlete who strives to become a champion must commit to a daunting amount of time, sacrifice and determination to achieve the rare but coveted title. My brother and I believe in applying the same strategy to our photography as well as our business. In business you just can’t survive, you either lead or fade it is the nature of the beast, business is a cutthroat competition.
In photography as in sport you have to constantly push yourself to stay ahead of the curve, overcome adversity, you either become the average joe-athlete, the hobbyist photographer or be the one to set the pace in both fields. There is no in-between. In our experience with photographing athletes we’ve come to recognize a familiar mindset; to perform at our respective utmost optimum levels.
Above is a screen-capture process of the compositing and retouching.
For this photo assignment we had an opportunity to photograph Canada’s Ironman Brent McMahon. A little background on Brent, he’s a Triathlete and Olympian, Ironman Champion Ironman 70.3 Champion and the 2nd fastest IRONMAN in history, he’s from Victoria BC. Double Vision Photography was hired to create a variety of looks of Brent for different personal, web, social media and print purposes. Brent’s been busy with speaking engagements and these photos had to be designed as a functional representation for this new extension of his brand. Even though these were not sports action shots they needed to emote athletics and the working business professional.
“I was extremely impressed with the quality of the corporate promotional headshots that I was looking for and the promotional video was a great addition to have. I had a great time working with John and Jamie as they made the photo shoot relaxing and fun. Great guys and great images. I will definitely be using them again for upcoming projects.”
— Brent McMahon – Olympian, Ironman Champion, Ironman 70.3 Champion, 2nd fastest IRONMAN in history.
We never put a strict limit on the number of shots we take, we shoot each look until we feel we’ve gotten it covered. In total for Brent’s assignment final delivery consist of all photos including a total 16 high resolution retouched images in both colour and black & white. We also included behind the scenes photos and created a short BTS video that could be shared via Brent’s social media platforms.
Here’s a portion of the notes from the looks we composed for this full day shoot. These notes were from our collaboration with Brent and his brother Graham who is the Business Development Representative, with Callum Creative.
(1) Portrait Moody (casual) – Brent in his preferred casual attire (fashionable cool style). To portray the relatable guy with a sense of style and confidence. Composition – Shoulder to mid-chest Crop. 2nd shot for (1) will be a creative / moody close up – Not a guaranteed shot as it is dependent on time and may have to be set for the last shot in studio due to preset lighting setup and settings. We will do our best to get it.
“As a business development rep for Callum Creative, a marketing company seeking to provide the best marketing assets possible to our clients, I am always looking to leverage the best photo and video content available for our clients’ projects. Double Vision Photography gave us exactly what we were looking for when it came to promotional marketing media for one of our most recent clients. Double Vision’s corporate head shots, lifestyle shots, and creative portraiture were all amazing, and Jamie and Johnny were a joy to work with and collaborate with. We highly recommend their services to anyone and we look forward to continuing to work with Double Vision Photography in the future!”
— Graham McMahon – Business Development Representative | Callum Creative
(2) Portrait Corporate Speaking (suit) – Similar to number (1) but present as a corporate theme, same crop. The image should portray professional confidence and approachability.
(3) Portrait Corporate Speaking (business casual) – Similar to number (2) a corporate casual theme. The image should portray professional confidence with approachability. This composition will be mid-body to just under the waistline.
(4) Portrait Race kit profile shot, shorts need to be included in one of the photos (cool lighting/ moody lighting) – Composed from knees to full body. No bike in this shot. Poses offered will be straight to camera or angled, lighting will be adjusted to create a more marketable style: edgy contrast, darker shadows. A more dramatic tone.
(5) Portrait Race kit with bike (creative lighting, interesting pose with bike) – Above the knees to mid-body compositions. With bike behind / across the shoulders. Posed straight to camera, lighting adjusted as needed to create a enhanced marketable style: edgy contrast, darker shadows. More dramatic tones.
(6) Portrait Corporate speaking with bike (suit or business casual) – Composition will be full/ half body. The entire bike cannot be guaranteed in the entire frame due to crop. Pose will need to reflect the correlation between Brent and his bike / leaning on bike / sitting on bike / open to suggestions here and Brent’s input for authenticity of stance; lighting will be adjusted to create a more marketable style: edgy contrast, darker shadows. A more dramatic tone.
These notes were to reveal a fraction of the work that goes into a full shoot such as this. We hit our stride early time flew and even though is around 8 hours to get this material all of us could have kept going for another 8. It’s always great to work in an environment where all cylinders are flying and the collaboration is perceptible. There were multiple versions of the shotlist but we stayed on course and did not veer off point although it was very easy to at times because of the ideas that we were collecting.
Brent was open to our direction on theses different kinds of shots he was very easy to work with. He prefered the dark grey background we suggested for most looks which is more inclined to our style of shooting, but we didn’t mind a lighter background for some variety. He wanted an artistic blend between bike and business suit, not tongue and cheek; the use of these photos are going to end up in other promotions with sponsors and future business ventures.
This was without doubt a great shoot, we really enjoyed working with Brent and his team and Callum Creative. The end product and photos truly captured the objectives and overall style of the images we were going for. For those who are interested in any of the gear or how this shoot was set up in studio we constructed a diagram below of the shoot.
The Technical Specs:
Camera – Canon 5D SR
Tethered into our – Adobe Lightroom CC.
Lens – 100mm f2.8L
70 – 200mm f2.8L
24 – 70mm f2.8 MkI
Side lights – Monolight Flash Heads – 2 InterFit EX 150 the light modifiers use were 2 LumaHawk Recessed (Strip) Softboxes with Grid 12“ X 48”. One thing to note, in order to fasten these 2 softboxes to the Interfit Monolights I use a third party Speed Ring Adapter from Elinchrome model # ASA 1008 (As of this writing I’m not even sure they are sold anymore) not easy to find especially in Canada, I had to order online from the US. These were our flanking rim lights on both the left and right side approximately half a foot behind and angled toward Brent. Both lights positioned on C-Stands for secure stability.
Key Light – 1 PhotoFlex LiteDome – 24” X 32” medium size. The light source here were two Canon 600EX-RT Speedlites mounted on a Profo RFi Speedlight Speedring. 2 layers of Diffusion secured to a Manfrotto 420B Combi Boom Stand.
Kicker Light – Over head Canon 600EX-RT Speedlite from behind mounted by Manfrotto 143N Magic Arm with Impact Super Clamp with T-Handle.
Background – Grey Backdrop paper roll, over a Phototeck Background Support System.
This set-up was for most of the shots in studio with variations and adjustments to light output distance, diffusion, bouncing and flagging. For shots of Brent with Split lighting see below Diagram.
Split Lighting Setup
Lens – 100mm f2.8L
Key Light which was previously a side lights with Monolight Flash Head – 1 InterFit EX 150 the light modifier use was a single LumaHawk Recessed (Strip) Softboxe with Grid 12“ X 48”. Positioned camera left, approximately half a foot deeper behind and angled straight toward Brent but not dead center more favoured towards the background to create the split light. Mounted on a C-Stands for secure stability.
Background – This time it was a black Backdrop paper roll, over a Phototeck Background Support System.
A black flag was directly behind subject to eliminate any light contamination and stop bounce. The white bounce board in front was to open up the shadows of the darker side of his profile.
