“Awesome, I may have to do a short portrait with my 3 medals somewhere with the mountain top/background.” The text read from our dear friend and former neighbor Meb when he confirmed we’d be home during his next visit to Mammoth. We’ve had lots of fun with Meb over the years, photographing him for his own personal project as well as commercial work for his sponsors. Well with the addition of the medal for winning the 2014 Boston Marathon, it would seem Meb wanted to do the medal portrait we’d always talked about. But he put a twist to it. He wanted his favorite high altitude training grounds in the background. We were more than happy to oblige!
The shoot was actually pretty simple, once the right location was found. Wanting Mammoth Mtn in the background and with it having no snow, it needed to be an evening shoot. Meb not being “real” tall, needed to find a place that he would be higher than the camera. This is so he would be not only taller than the mountain, but so I would be shooting up on him naturally. Then there was the light, I wanted main light from the flash doing the lion share lighting Meb, the ambient light bringing life to the background. Because of the wind we’ve been having, I went with a beauty dish up close and personal to light Meb. I knew I’d have it above and angled so the light would fall off keeping the medals from blowing out. And I wanted a sidelight on both one side of Meb as well as the sage in the background. I wanted just a hint of the Eastern Sierra in the photo as that was Meb’s request.
With the spot found, we arrived early and set up the Profoto B1 / 27″ Beauty Dish Reflector on a C Stand (32lbs of weight on it because of the wind) and took test shots (which took seconds with the Profoto TTL), shooting with the Df / 85f1.8 AFS and the Profoto TTL. As you can see from the BTS photo, it was a real simple set up but the results were what were desired and we were done in minutes. Meb is off to NYC for the marathon this coming weekend and hopefully he’ll be back up with a new medal so we can take a new portrait. Go Meb!!!