Portrait of Hillsdale College basketball player for team promotional material.
The goal when creating the photos was to show a high key style and let the emotion and intensity of the game drive the photo. Since I knew I wanted these to be in black and white, I set my camera to review images in this manner so I could fine-tune it better on set than in Photoshop. Additionally since using a white wall, the athletes were instructed to change to the white uniforms for this portion of the photo shoot.
The image was created in camera with a few adjustments to the curves done in post-production. A simple mixture of water and oil helped bring out the sweat.
Simple three light setup. Main light was an Einstein 640 with 3' softbox and no diffusion directly above camera, pointed at the subject.
The two other lights were Einstein 640s in a large 84" umbrellas behind subject and pointed at the white wall 120ยบ on each side of the camera. Background lights were aimed to give just a bit of spill onto the subject for a slight edge light and to help define the muscles a bit. The edge lighting was also done to help show off the sweat as well.