Fun shoot with JA Dudley--Photographer/MMA Fighter

So my first informational blog will be about a shoot I did this past weekend for a friend of mine (and fellow photog)--JA Dudley. In addition to being a photog, JA also fights in professional mixed martial arts (MMA) fights. I have been training with him for quite a while (I practice jiujitsu) and am working with him on his MMA aspirations.

I also had my friend and photog mentor Abraham Then with me as we were both trying some new (to us) techniques. Abe and I work extremely well together and I always learn a lot from him when we're doing a project together.

JA has a fight coming up in Atlantic City, NJ on June 11 (Ring of Combat) and we needed to do a shoot with him for promotional photos. We had also gotten him a quasi-sponsorship with a clothing company (FightCo) based out of Sewell, NJ and wanted to get some shots of him wearing their gear. So we met at our gym and set up a shoot.

What I was After
Ok, anytime I'm doing a shoot like this, I want to determine exactly what I'm after and discuss that with the customer (in this case JA) to ensure it works for them. I was after a grungy, dark, almost evil look for this shoot. Fighting is an angry sport and I wanted some of that to come out as well. If you've ever met JA, you know he's one of the nicest guys you'll ever meet so I knew I had my work cut out for me.

What I envisioned is some black and white shots as I feel they're better for this sort of photography. Of course, I also wanted to get some color shots as the FightCo logo has color in it. I also wanted some decent shots of JA wearing FightCo gear. When shooting this type of product photo, it's not as much about the product as it is about the feel of the product and what they are working to convey as a brand. It's also almost as much about the model as it is about the apparel so I wanted to capture the brand in this type of environment with an actual fighter wearing it as well.

Setup
I went pretty basic on this shoot for a lot of reasons I won't go into here. But here's a list of what I used:

-Canon 50D
-Canon 28-70mm L lens
-(2) Canon 580EX II Flashes
-60" Umbrella
-Small Softbox

Depending on what we were doing at the time, we used both or one of the flashes. Ditto for umbrella or softbox use and placement. We shot at night so we didn't get extra ambient light through the windows in the gym and we turned off the lights in the gym when shooting.

Results
I won't bore you with all of the technical details in this blog but we got some nice results overall. I'd say I hit my objective on the grungy, evil-looking shots. As you can see here, we got a nice dark, evil-looking shot of JA:

However, I felt is was lacking somehow. So I did some more tweaking on the shot in Lightroom--my photo management application of choice--and came up with this:

I feel the black and white with a hint of yellow really captures what I was after. It is sufficiently evil-looking.

Here's another example, similar concept, a little more angry though:

Remember, we also did some product photos as well. Here are some examples of what we got as far as that's concerned:

I really like this one:

I hope you enjoyed viewing these photos. You can find more of my work in these places:

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