Mirror image

I recently was assigned to do a prep sports athlete of the year section called Winter Peak Peformers. In the newspaper world there is not a lot of time to come up with a concept, coordinate with your subjects, and execute the plan in the required time. I decided on the mirror image concept as a means to work in the studio and have my subjects come to me. All that was really required was a mirror, some different colored gels for the background light, and some trial and error getting the subject to fit in the proportions of the mirror. The biggest challenge was to come up with a different concept with each athlete, and still have a uniform theme. The image of the swimmer is my favorite from this section, for the elements of mirror, subject, and background came together well. The technical details required a 4'x5' quarter inch thick mirror, 2 studio lights with softboxes, one studio background light with colored gel, a 1600-watt powerpack, Nikon D1X camera with 17-35mm 2.8 lense. I used two sawhorses and placed the mirror on top of them while using phonebooks to raise the front end of the mirror to fit the different height subjects. When the subject was lit by the studio lights the image would be reflected in the mirror. To avoid glare I feathered the light (instead of directly lighting the subject head on, the light is aimed to one side). The section will run April 6th, 2007.