Al Bahr – Chiefs Fan

A recent Sunday afternoon, my middle son, Aloysius–we call him Al, and I was looking at some sports portraits from Rock Town Media. They created a portrait using a spray bottle to add a mist in the background with a color gel shooting through it.

Al loved that photo. I decided to get my gear to try to recreate the photograph.

He is my most athletic-minded and sports-obsessed kid. Al decided to grab his football and his favorite Chiefs hoodie.

We went to the shed and got the lights set up. Here is a look at what I was using. My oldest son Charlie was on spray bottle duty.

First I set my camera to darken the scene from the lights in the shed. Then I turned on the lights in back to make sure they were giving a defining rim light on Al.

The next step was to add in my main light with a softbox on it.

Al wanted to try one with motion, so I asked him to run across the frame.

Now it was time to add in the mist. First, I wanted to reposition a light behind Al.

Let’s add some mist and move the lights to work best with it.

Looks like we have it set in a good spot. Let’s try a couple more.

Now the final photo, which could be used for the cover a his rap album. Not that I think he is working on that. One never knows…

It wasn’t quite like we saw on Instagram, but I think we created something pretty good.

We decided we had enough photographs and it was time to get in as it was cold in the shed.

If you are interested in creating a similar set of portraits, please use the form below to contact me. I cannot wait to create more amazing shots like these.