A few years ago, maybe more than fifteen, my dear friend Pepi, showed me a place I knew I would like. It was the Uruguayan Boxing Association and there I met Antonio Canedo, a great fighter trainer. During three summers, I did a few photo sessions that can be summarized in my Boxing Club portfolio; but this time I asked Canedo to give a class of the Strobist Workshop that I have been teaching in Montevideo for some years.

Modelo / Vale Bottino / Valentino Bookings

The original idea was not to make a photograph that had a sporty point, but a series of photos of a model in an environment that contrasted with her look and attitude. But at the end of the session I could not restrain myself from returning to the aesthetics of my press photographs of the eighties, and emulating with today’s digital technology, a photograph taken with Tri X film and developed with D76, 1+1, 11 minutes, at 20 degrees. After all, the gym is only two blocks away from Brecha Weekly Newspaper, where I started my professional career in photojournalism.

The first pictures

lighting scheme I

The gym is very bright. It is located on a corner and on both facades there are large windows. Despite this, unless I turned up the ISO very high, it was not enough to take the picture. I worked at 400 ISO and 800 ISO; I don’t usually work at higher isos as my camera doesn’t work well in those conditions.

I then placed a translucent umbrella as the main light. The location of the umbrella had to coincide with the direction of the natural light coming in from the window, so as not to achieve an unnatural result, which I did not like.
I don’t usually work with umbrellas, but I must admit that it has its advantages. On the one hand, it is inexpensive compared to other accessories and it is also very easy to assemble and light to transport. If we are teaching a Strobist class, these three arguments go hand in hand with this technique.
The transmission umbrella, as is the case with the one I used in this class, is wide and somewhat stiff relative to a reflection umbrella or light box. But the model was far from the real window and the closest light to natural light was produced by this umbrella.

The lighting ratio was very important, I was trying to achieve that the intensity of the flash light was not above the ambient light, so I shot at 0 ratio. As the environment was to be suggested, it was not necessary to use a great depth of field. By using an open aperture, the flash power was sufficient and the ambient light “filled in” the space. It was necessary, however, to make a proper white balance due to the mixture of existing lights of different color temperatures. I did two different processes of the Raw and layered them in Photoshop.

The colorful wardrobe was more appropriate for the space where we were working, so I took several photographs in various corners of the gym. A wall full of press clippings of great national and international boxing stars decorated the walls. Here it was then a matter of keeping the same character of the light of the photos I had been taking, but avoiding the reflection of the glare in the direction of the camera. To do this, this time I placed the flash laterally and the reflections went outside the “family of angles”. I didn’t have much of a shot, and I had to take the picture with a wide angle.

Lighting scheme II

The final picture

I like the resulting color photography. Since the technique is digital, the photographer can be in charge of the chromatic palette of his photographs. In the past it was also possible, but few photographers had their own color laboratory and the chromatic variables provided by the films were very limited. I love chemical photography, I must have developed no less than 1500 reels in black and white and a few hundred in color. But today’s photographic technique allows the photographer to be the master of the finishing of his image. Therefore, I took the whim of processing the photograph in black and white. I prefer to process the Raw file directly in black and white, although not in Grayscale. I also usually develop my photos at 16 bits and in a wide color space.

In the photo at hand, there was good natural light from a window to the right of the camera. I placed a small white Beauty Dish, which I like to use a lot, to decrease the contrast of the scene. I also used the translucent umbrella for effect lighting from behind, since no light was coming from there.

As can be seen in the following two images, the light effect of the umbrella in a semi backlit position, or “kicker light”, separates the model from the background, enhances her braid and gives more volume to the body.
As I usually work in these cases, I used Yongnuo 560 flashes, with their respective Godox PB820 batteries and the Pocket Wizards to synchronize the flashes by radio.