I’ve been continuing to work on my photography skills and looking for projects to work on that are fun and help me learn more. I’ve worked out for a long time at a local personal training studio, Select Fitness. I had looked at the photos of the studio on their website and thought I could get them some better shots. Here are my photos.
I learned a number of things on this first try at commercial photography.
- Photographing a space like this was a lot more difficult than I expected. I tried to think through the uses of the photos and frame things right, but it wasn’t obvious to me exactly what and how I should be shooting.
- I wanted to use motion to capture some energy. I think it worked okay on the treadmill, allowing the picture to focus on the equipment and keep the people in the frame to show action and energy. However, I tried this on some other shots and it didn’t work very well.
- Lighting is key, and I am a complete newbie to lighting issues.
Of all the shots I took I think I liked this one with the weight stack and leg press the most. I really like the lines of the equipment and the shapes of the weights. The wall in the background makes a nice backdrop. I could see this being used with type over the top of it in really interesting ways as well.
Very nice, Jamie! Will Select Fitness put these on their site? They are much better than the current photos.
Thanks Dante! They are checking out the photos and I expect will put them up on the site pretty soon.
Nice photos of the treadmills. how did you get that transparent sense of motion?
John
Thanks John! That’s entirely a technique I learned at Layne Kennedy’s photography workshop. I just put the aperture way up and increased the shutter to a couple of seconds. We had people running on the treadmills and of course they blurred out, but everything else stayed crisp.
This was the one “tricky” effect that I thought worked really well. Pictures of treadmills with nobody on them, just sitting there, are very boring. But you also don’t want to distract from the focus. So, “motion” with the figures gives the sense of action but keeps the focus on the gear.