Sports Photography Archives - Studio 3, Inc.®

Spirit Week in the Studio

Posted on September 26, 2016May 22, 2019 by Studio 3 Inc

Ready? OKAY!

In the Studio with Dehen

Our PDX location had its very own Spirit Week as Dehen Cheer paid us a visit. Dehen manufactures custom cheer and dance uniforms. Thusly our spacious, new northeast studio was overtaken by color, hairspray, pom poms and tons of pep!

Maekup time in Studio Dehen

Glamourous photoshoots require glamourous setups. There was no shortage of makeup on hand. Our studio has lots natural light to get the models camera ready.

Dehen Studio homework

Being a high schooler on the set doesn’t mean getting the day off. These young women were hard at work in between shots. We asked what their favorite part of being in the studio was:
“There are so many good snacks!”
“Getting to know others teams outside of the competition.”
“I can nap on the couch until it’s my turn to be in front of the camera!”

Cheer-rex — Emerson showing off her patented “Cheer-Rex” pose.

We love working with kids! Emerson, the youngest person at the photoshoot, had a lot to say regarding her first modeling gig: “It is exciting. I like when they did my hair. Everyone is kind here and it is fun” adding, “I hope to get into karate next year.”

Big, grand productions are a specialty of ours at both the Portland and Seattle locations! We are more than a photo studio; let us handle the model releases, food, and all other behind-the-scenes needs. Give us a call and take over our studio.

Commercial Product Photographer Chris Eltrich and Splashing Goggles!

Posted on July 16, 2013May 22, 2019 by Studio 3 Inc

Commercial Product Photographer Chris Eltrich has been playing with splashes to add some fun to his photography portfolio. His recent shoot included goggles and an aquarium. It was a day full of fun that ended with Chris dropping everything from lemons to bananas in the water to see which created the best splash. When it comes to focusing on the perfect splash, Chris offers some insight on how to get the job done:

The biggest challenge to the splash shot is the timing. Just capturing the splash is fairly challenging, but you want the product to look good too. You could, alternatively, take a bunch of shots and composite pieces together, but I wanted to get the splash and product in the same shot, so I needed a consistent method. Now at this point, a gear savvy photographer would begin assembling an elaborate system to trigger the camera when the product falls past a certain point, that you can tune to a fraction of a second. But as the jobs of my generation are slowly being appropriated by “the machines”, I decided to go all “John Henry” and show these machines we humans are still relevant.

I had my assistant drop the goggles about two feet above the water and I hit the shutter right before they landed. The first drop turned great, so I gave myself a congratulatory pat on the back (actually, I instructed my assistant to give me a congratulatory pat on the back.) Oh the joys of being a professional photographer. And so we began our day-long adventure in dropping things in an aquarium.

After a morning of getting great shots of goggles and receiving upwards of forty congratulatory pats on the back (so many that I ended up congratulating him with seven pats of his own), my timing abilities began to decline, and I started getting a lot of pictures of an empty tank or a pair of goggles floating.

Now some would fault me with not hitting the shutter at the right time, but I believe it was the machines, jealous of my amazing “early morning” timing, using some sort of time travel device or computer virus to stop me from getting amazing product photography consistently all day. Luckily, since I had already taken some shots that I loved in the morning we still felt like we had defeated the growing menace that is automation.

To view more of our Commercial Product Photography please click here!

Commercial Product Photographer Craig Wagner Live Hard Work Hard!

Posted on January 29, 2013May 22, 2019 by Studio 3 Inc

We all agree around Studio 3 that Craig Wagner is one of the hardest working photographers around. And his lighting skills are truly amazing! What he can do with an ordinary pile of broken concrete and a pair of work boots rocks! A few thoughts from Commercial Product Photographer Craig Wagner!

This was truly a smoke and mirrors shot. I returned from a location shoot to a pile of rubble sitting in the studio. This was left over from a previous project. How could I let this opportunity pass? I pulled a few tools from my garage for props, contrasted the rough concrete texture with smoke, and asked my producer to locate a pair of boots. Nothing like a bit of inspiration after a shoot day!
I found myself in a rock and a hard place on this project due to working alone, which I may add, I do prefer sometimes during photo testing. It can greatly help with the creative juices. Normally, as a team we get extremely involved in the concepting process, but this project was extremely spontaneous. So it was completely up to me!

I had to operate the Hasselblad and the Roscoe Smoke Machine at the same time. What to do? I recently downloaded Phocus App for my Iphone 5 that enabled me to trigger the camera and operate the smoke machine while being away from the eye of the camera. I am not trying to do a big recommendation for this App, but its pretty cool. It allows me to completely control the camera functions with not being tied to the camera or the computer and it even gives me a preview mode so I’m not running back and forth to the computer screen. This is a really great tool for our Commercial Photography clients and one of the great things about working at Studio 3 is we are always up to date on the latest technology!

Lifestyle Photographer Swinging Color!

Posted on September 4, 2012May 22, 2019 by Studio 3 Inc

Recently, Lifestyle Photographer Dana Jonas, decided she wanted to photograph the newest apparel line to hit the tennis world. She however, did not want this to be like any other shoot. Wanting to play with the lighting, she aspired to emulate the motion associated with the intense sport of competitive tennis. Read her thoughts below on this motion detecting light technique:

It’s been a while since I painted with light and I thought instead of fighting the motion (my first plan), I’d use it to my benefit! Luckily Studio 3 had this wonderful concrete wall built for a previous job that I thought would be a great backdrop for this idea. I set-up the Speedotron Black Line 2400ws strobes and a red gelled Mole-Richardson 2k continuous hot-light, which was carefully flagged off. I did this so that it would mostly fall on the racket as they were moving. I set the exposure to about 1 or 2 seconds depending on how long I needed for the trail and fired the Canon 5D MarkIII camera when they started moving. Then with the pocket wizards in hand, I fired the strobes manually at the end of the swing so the red trail would be behind the tennis racket from the direction they were swinging. Had I fired the strobe at the beginning of the exposure, the red trail would have been in front of the motion, which visually wouldn’t make any sense at all. This shoot was a blast and required some coordinated button-pushing and obviously very talented tennis models! Truly makes a photographer understand that their tool is not a camera, it’s light. I can’t wait to try this again with a different color. Any suggestions on the color I should work with?

To view more Lifestyle images created at Studio 3 please click here!

Bike Photography In Two Styles!

Posted on June 1, 2012May 22, 2019 by Studio 3 Inc

Seattle and Portland are in the nation’s top ten bike friendly cities, so it’s no surprise our photographers are inspired by the environmentally friendly mode of transportation, therefore they get their bike photography on. Dana Jonas and Chris Eltrich teamed up to play out their personal strengths, with Dana shooting bicyclist Eddie and Chris shooting the fun color inspired product shots, it was a bike to remember. While Chris shot his series in studio, Dana chose a pier on Green Lake and here are her thoughts on bike photography:

I chose to shoot on a pier in Green Lake to have the option of creating the element of surprise. My goal was to have the viewer take a second look, like: what, wait, wow…is that guy riding on water? The model was great, seeing eye to eye on my vision. He even got so intense as making himself hyperventilate to look authentic. It was a great team and match up, I am definitely loving the fun visual result!

Check out the lifestyle bike photoshoot below:

Here are a few words from Chris Eltrich on shooting bike photography in studio:

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