We are fast approaching the end of the summer 2023, and it feels like I do not have much to share from this season’s photoshoots. I do not know yet if this is because I possibly have nothing to share, or because I am exhausted from the change in my life from the last six months (I became a homeowner and cat dad), but I feel like the time is not quite right to share some of my newer photos. Normally, my process involves having a look ‘back’ at my photos before I post them, to be able to as coolly as possible select them from a broad menu of finished images, but right now I am late to finish some photoshoots from more than a year ago.
So, without further ado, I am sharing some photos I have, to my recollection, never shared before from a shoot that is so far back that it feels ancient relative to my development as a photographer. Nevertheless, this is one which remains kind of a favorite that I like going back to from time to time. Moreover, the name of this fitness team, “Will & Execution”, feels like a good recipe for getting me out of the torpor that has been gripping me the last little while, if not on such a physical level as what is depicted here.
That being said, there is no way in hell, sadly, that I can recall the names of each team member, because of how it had been organized, so please bear with me on that one.
When I say ‘forever ago’, this means May 2016. Hell, this is too close to be called 10 years ago, way too close for my own comfort. I do not like the feeling of getting old, haha. This was a shoot organized by the Ottawa Photography Meetup, and taking place on the grounds of the National Gallery. I guess that the National Gallery provides some real good backgrounds, like the cupola in the image above, but now I have to wonder why this site was selected for a shoot about fitness, in the very physical sense. It did, if nothing else, provide the ‘models’ (all genuine team members and none of them with actual experience modelling in front of a camera) with nice props on which to do some fitness demonstrations.
At the time, I shot with a 6D and did not really have any fast lenses. To the best of my recollection, I was principally using two lenses at the shoot: a Sigma 24-105 f4 Art, a Canon 100 f2.8L Macro, and a Canon 35 f2 IS. None of them bad lenses at all, but boy did I struggle with composition and autofocus. I kept so few final images of that shoot, and even these were not all that terrible if I am to be honest. Most would not really meet my current standards of quality, the result of so much compromise.
I had to make so many compromises with each shot as well, and in many ways it still feels like I always made the lousiest choice: either it was wide, well-focused, but with everything in focus; wide with a shallow depth of field, but also badly focused; and with the subject well isolated but you could not see the scene at all.
Wide, well-focused, but with everything is in focus. Ugh.
At least I have several photos where I can actually see what is in the background, something that I sometimes forget to do well now that I own a bunch of (the holy trinity, really) of 1.4 primes.
Despite what I could call quite a number of errors in technique and composition - I am not showing those, but I have several in my final images where I only have half the scene and the model cut in awkward places… I cannot quite bring myself to deleting those, but oh hell are they terrible - the Will and Execution shoot remains one of my favorites even to this day.
It also serves as a lesson that it is important, when I organize my own shoots, that I should provide guidance to the models about the wardrobe.
I might very well add some of these photos back into my screensaver.
