Paige Hassen: JRN

I had a lot of fun with this assignment. Being a big fan of sports, I was looking forward to this assignment a lot.

I immediately thought of working with someone I knew on the softball team, Katie Sexton, whom you see below. I was originally planning on going to her dugout and on the field with her, but the entire weekend has winds of over 20 mph, so I knew that the umbrella would not work outside. When she offered to use the team locker room, I thought it would be a great opportunity.

Given the semi-small space, there wasn’t too much to work with, but I am happy with the shots we got. Katie was very good at knowing what to do in front of the camera and knowing what poses would look good for the photos. It took a while to find a way to use a backlight effectively in the small space, but I ended up putting it more to the side and a little back to make it look best with the space. My favorite photo is the one with the helmet.

For Olivia’s pictures, we used the MAC gym at the SAC because apparently the dance instructor at the school is not very willing to let people in her studio at all. This worked out, though, because Olivia has been performing on courts recently for the CMU basketball games, so this MAC gym at least shows her in a similar element.

As a dancer, she was very photogenic and easy to take pictures of as well. We both really wanted to capture some of her spins and jumps, so after getting the timing down, they turned out really well. We did some posed photos, and then she also ran through her favorite routine a couple of times so that I was able to get a few in the moment shots. I like them all a lot. There wasn’t a lot of places to shoot that wouldn’t be distracting, so we tried to stay in relatively the same spot, moving to the center to get a couple wider shots towards the end.

The set ups: