My son is crazy about basketball. He started to really get into it a couple of years ago and my wife and I have been trying to keep him playing constantly ever since. So this one particular night, I was taking him to this open gym event for him to play but when we got there, the event was canceled because not enough people had shown up. We had little choice but to head back home. When we got back, I said: hey, why don't we do a cool basketball photoshoot since we both have nothing to do for a while? He agreed so I started setting up the equipment.

I wanted to do something different with colored gels. I pictured in my head red and blue to contrast hot and cold and a high angled sharp main light for dramatic effect and muscle sculpting. I decided to make the background red and do a blue outline of the body. Then a small beauty dish up high for the face. I started with the background light and got that the way I wanted with some fall-off to dark.

Once that was dialed in I brought in two lights with blue gels on either side and set up the blue rim.

Finally, I put the beauty dish up high and dialed in the main light.

This is what the final setup in my living room looked like.

Once everything was set up it was just a matter of running through a bunch of poses. We were limited by the size of the backdrop and the location of the lights as to how much movement we could do and how broad the poses could be, but I was looking for a tight shot anyway.

Even though this shot was all about color with the gels, I decided to do one pose in black and white because the pose was really accentuating the muscle shapes in the arm and I felt this would be emphasized by the monochrome treatment. (Plus I just really like black and white).

So there we have it. Some great shots. My favorite was the one at the top of the post. I liked it so much that I had a 20"x20" metal print made of it by Artbeat Studios, and that thing is awesome! It looks fantastic on my wall and it's the first thing people comment on when walking into my living room.