Wrestling with ideas

I recently had an opportunity to help a photographer friend with an assignment to shoot 3 high school wrestlers for the local newspaper. We got the standard shots required, and then had some fun getting creative with our lighting and posing.

The local paper has a page they dedicate to showcasing high school athletes. They call it the poster page. They've been doing it for quite some time, and wanted to find a unique way to pose the 3 boys. The thing is, there's not many ways pose a single wrestler that is complimentary and hasn't already been done. So, we decided to let them hit some basic, standard poses, and change the background with the creative stuff we did.

Meet Josh, Vince and Seth:


We took action shots of the boys creating some wrestling moves, and zoomed in to specific parts of their bodies. We wanted to include each boy's face in the action shot, but Josh,(above) couldn't stay. So, instead, I took a tight shot of the arms of the other 2 in the "down" position they take to restart a match that's been interrupted. Made an interesting abstract for a basic pose.



This background shows another angle on that same starting position. Vince is focusing on the imaginary ref, waiting for him to start the match. It's his job to pin the other guy down, preventing him from breaking free of the hold.

Since we had put a blue spot on the background during standard poses, it seemed a good idea to include that blue theme into the background so the 2 images would blend together nicely.



All the boys were upbeat, friendly and in good spirits, but Seth gave us fantastic examples of his good nature off the mat and his intense focus on it. This is my favorite composite of the three.

I just wish we'd had more time to get some more shots for both parts of the composite (sigh).


Hope you enjoy...