Capture the Winning Spirit: Creative Approach to School Sports Portraits of DV Warrior Wrestling

When invited to become a sponsor of junior DV Warrior Wrestling team, I wanted to treat them to a creative approach to traditional school sports portraits. Here are my techniques and tips on spicing them up.

School sports photography is more than just capturing the action on the field. It’s about capturing the emotion and passion of the athletes. Capture the winning spirit of the team. Tell an athlete’s story through your images. To do this, try taking a creative approach to sports photography to help you build unique and dynamic school sports portraits. Just as cheerleaders build up a team’s spirit, individual sports portraits can boost an athlete’s confidence and even play psychological ticks on the opponents. Have you thought of that?

Sponsorship as Giving Back to the Community

When my past clients Jackie and David approached me with an offer of becoming DV Junior Warrior Wrestling team sponsor (Milford, PA in Pike County), several thoughts ran through my mind.

First, we live in the same community of Wild Acres in Poconos, and we made a few splashes with their wood-chopping engagement session, followed by a sweet wedding in 2021. David is one of the wrestling coaches at the junior DV Warrior Wrestling, and their youngsters are on the team. I wanted to do something nice for my neighbors. I try giving back to the community through documentaries, free photography classes, event photography, Halloween and Mother’s Day portraits. I could also find room for such sponsorship, I thought!

Accepting the Challenge

Another, as big a point, was that I was surely up to a challenge! I haven’t done school sports photography per se. That never concerns me. I once took on underwater photography, and the results knocked everyone’s socks off (check out this shot from the session). I’ve worked with youth a lot, including athletes and performers, just never with school sports teams in one take. So, I put my thoughts and skills together, and ventured.

My immediate vision was a pretty far cry from your regular school sports team portraits. Dark background, contrasty lighting sources, lots of shadows, moody expressions, and special color and texture treatment in post-production—these are frequent staples of my signature portraits for adults (say, beauty or fashion) and kids.

Tips on Capturing the Winning Spirit

Capturing the winning spirit of athletes is the key to creating dynamic and eye-catching school sports portraits. To do this, you need to conquer the emotion and passion of the athletes in the images. Here are a few tips:

• Get to know your athletes: getting to know the athletes before the photoshoot is essential. I asked the parents and coaches about athletes’ routines, goals, and competitions. I also studied their Facebook group, read the updates and comments, so I could use this information to create the most dynamic and meaningful images.
• Let the athletes be themselves: let the athletes express their emotions freely. I knew they’ve done “normal” school sports portraits before, with traditional poses. Those are always needed, and I started with them, too. But letting the DV junior warriors be themselves in the second round of portraits helped create more unique and memorable images you’ll see below.
• Capture the action: it helps to use motion to capture the dynamic energy of the athletes. Since we did headshots, and not the competition shots, I added a few “mini-motions”, whether it was leaning in, lifting their medals, preparing for a move, etc.
• Use props: props can be used to add a sense of drama and excitement to your school sports portraits. Nothing would depict the winning spirit as medals and trophies. Hammers were another unsurprising prop for DV Warrior Wrestling team members.
• Try out different angles: try shooting from different angles and heights to add interest and dimension to your images. I shot most of my junior DV Warrior Wrestling athletes from my kneeling position, but sometimes I dropped even lower to give the junior warriors more “cred”.
• Set up the perfect backdrop: find a unique and interesting backdrop to create the perfect atmosphere for your images. If you’re shooting outdoors, a natural option would be a sports field to match the athletes’ activity. I shot inside one of Delaware Valley High School wrestling gyms but to give my school sports portraits a “character”, I opted for a neutral grey background. Its versatility kicks in if you know your creative lighting: you can do both bright and airy, and dark and moody sports portraits with it.
• Use the right lighting: make sure you have the right equipment to create the perfect lighting for your images. Many school sports photographers use natural light for outdoor portraits or in well-lit gyms. Our DV Warrior Wrestling gym had no windows, so I had to bring my Hensel studio lights. However, even if I knew I’d be in a bright gym, I’d still use speedlights. They give that unmistaken polished touch and a superb creativity control. For an even more dramatic feel, I used a large beauty dish for a dramatic fall-off in one of my light sources.
• Experiment with shadows: shadows were my trump to create dynamic and eye-catching images. Creative lighting always gives an edge over the natural or flat light that is so typical of traditional school sports photography. Using multiple light sources in strategic locations gave me that striking advantage.

Post-Processing Techniques for Creative School Sports Portraits

Post-processing is the other essential part of creating stunning school sports portraits. Here are a few post-processing techniques to help express the winning spirit:

• Adjust the colors: adjust the colors to create a more dynamic and eye-catching image. For this shoot, I actually worked on desaturation filters, finding the right color tint, and then balancing it with the underlying Photoshop layer.
• Sharpen the image: use sharpening techniques to bring out the details and make the image pop. There is nothing soft in most of school sports portraits, really.
• Experiment with contrast: use contrast to add interest and dimension to your images. You can also use a number of HDR-type adjustment layers in Photoshop.
• Play with shadows: shadows can be emphasized by tweaking the Photoshop levels or Lightroom brushes, shadows and blacks settings. I also spend a lot of time selectively painting with the light and burning. Studying the old masters of Renaissance would give you a solid portrait light theory.
• Add grain: adding grain can help give your images a more dynamic and vintage look. Such look worked pretty well for a grunge aspect of DV Warrior Wrestling: gritty, worn and torn, endured and hardened winning spirit.

For those less experienced with advanced Photoshop techniques, tools such as FixThePhoto’s face editor can assist in refining portraits, ensuring that each athlete’s expression and features are presented with clarity and impact, enhancing the overall quality of the school sports portraits.

Multi-Faced DV Warrior Wrestling

The school sports portraits you’ll see below are actually the add-ons to the “normal” ones that I shot first. So parents, don’t freak out. There will be traditional portraits that you’ve seen with other local photographers, too!

One more point: such creative portraits take time. My proper sessions are 1-2 hours long per person, allowing me to find and develop a character, trying multiple “looks”. I only had a few minutes per boy there. All the guys were very cooperative, but some were more expressive than the others, so the results vary.

Here are the two ways I photographed to cover all bases:

Following this blog, a full password-protected gallery will be prepared for the parents next week. Everything you’ll see in that gallery will be “as is” and free of charge as part of Zorz Studios’ sponsorship of the Capture the Winning Spirit: Creative Approach to School Sports Portraits of DV Warrior Wrestling team. Individual requests for custom editing are optional.

And here are all the 18 DV Jr Warrior Wrestling athletes, in the order photographed:

Creating stunning school sports portraits is a challenge, but it’s not impossible. By taking a creative approach to sports photography and using the right tips and techniques, you can create eye-catching dynamic images that will capture the winning spirit of your athletes.

If you’re ready for a fresh look or added dramatic feel in your school sports photography, let Zorz Studios give you a different perspective and help you capture the winning spirit of your athletes!

Behind the Scenes

Lastly, one behind-the-scenes shot. I keep forgetting to ask people to get more of this… 🙂

Feedback

Some feedback I received: