As you may know, I love to push and continually challenge myself. I recently challenged myself with a fitness shoot, something I had never done before. I tried to research the perfect tips, settings etc and I found next to nothing that was helpful. My inspiration was a dark, moody, serious style. So I experimented, played around and just decided to try it!

So to prep for the shoot I found Jessica, a model willing to work with me and knowing it was my first shoot of the type, willing to be patient with me. Next to secure a gym to use! Jessica found us Crossfit High Order to use for the afternoon (check them out at http://crossfithighorder.com/). 

On the day of, I brought a bunch of lenses and ended up using my 24-70 for the entire shoot, three softboxes, reflector and my new lighting wand. The gym itself has windows on two sides so I used the softboxes to direct the light where I wanted it to land. After playing around a bit I ended up settling on 1/200, f5.6, 160 ISO. I set up the lighting in a triangle, using a large floor to ceiling white board as my white infinity wall (just be careful because the whiteboards reflect the light and if you aren't careful is will shine onto the background itself). I used the reflector to throw some extra light and the wand as a hair light. 1/200 f5.6 160ISO 24-70mm

For this pic I used a softbox on the models left side and a wand as a hair light to back light and cast shadows. The shadows create great definition of her muscles.

In this setup, I used two softboxes on the right side and the natural light coming in from the high windows. I attached the battle ropes to a weight stand and I was positioned directly in the center of the ropes. Yes, she was strong enough to beat me with the ropes....

This was a special request by Jessica. Together we channeled a boxers pose with dark, moody tones. Lighting was set up on her left, above her head, casting shadows on her face.

A huge thanks to Andrew at Crossfit High Order for the use of the gym-I could not have found a better set up and we both thank you for everything you did to help out!

Crossfit High Order http://crossfithighorder.com/