Photographing the Myrtle Beach Pelicans Baseball Team
I recently had the opportunity to photograph a few members of the Myrtle Beach Pelicans minor league baseball team. They are a farm team of the Texas Rangers. The client asked me to create portraits of these up and coming players.
On my first attempt, I arrived at the stadium just ahead of a thunderstorm. Not only did I get rained out, but the game that evening was cancelled too. The second day I had full sun and puffy clouds floating by. Great chamber of commerce weather, but maybe not so great for portraits in the middle of the afternoon.
My initial thought was to set up an overhead frame to soften the light, but without a crew (and needing to work quickly to move out before the start of the game), I ruled against that. So instead, I decided to overpower the sunlight and use it as a fill.
I started with a silver beauty dish with a grid on camera left as my main light, then added a large Chimera over the camera for fill. Finally, I added a flash head with a 7″ reflector to the right side as a separation light. The images were captured with a Canon 5d Mark II with a 24-70, 1/80 at f/22.
To give the magazine an option, I also photographed each player sitting in the dugout. The lighting was very simple – just open shade. But this gave the art director a totally different look to choose from and only required a few minutes of the players’ time. Again, the camera was the Canon 5d Mark II and a 24-70 lens.
