In this first “Behind the Scenes” series, I thought I’d dive into this recent, and very impromptu, shoot I did with Ave Maria Ultimate Frisbee. 

So first things first: why was I back in Ave at the beginning of December? Well, with covid canceling our commencement that was supposed to be last May, the university kindly rescheduled, giving us an opportunity to walk and give a proper goodbye to all our friends. Luckily I was able to attend, and got a mini-vacation in sunny Florida! 

In the days leading up to graduation, the frisbee guys that were still on campus held a small scrimmage with the alumni that had returned for commencement, and a few that were in the area. There were alumni playing who were seniors when I was a freshman, and it was a great opportunity to bring everyone together and have some fun. 

One thing to know about the AMU frisbee team is that they are awesome but highly underappreciated. They almost never get photos taken at their games, and even working for Marketing last year, I only had one opportunity to take pictures of the team. This made getting pictures of the scrimmage even more essential to me, especially since AMU classes of old and new would be there!

Typically, frisbee is a spring sport, but in Florida, the warm weather makes it possible to play all year round. The only problem: no matter where you are when it’s winter, the sun sets early. With a 4:00 PM scrimmage, this meant that the boys would only have about an hour and a half of sun, and I’d only have a good hour before I had to start making some creative decisions. Usually, it’s not the worst thing in the world to just bump your ISO and lower your shutter speed (which allows more light to enter the frame), but a lower shutter means less movement, and these guys weren’t exactly walking across the field. 

Not only this, but golden hour in Florida proves to be a tricky obstacle too. When taking portraits, it provides a beautiful hue of golden glow on your subject, and you can manipulate angles to make the photos come out clear and avoid direct sunlight. However, you can’t control the angles you get in sports photography, and you also can’t help it when someone dives right into direct sunlight.

The Florida sun is much harsher than in the northern states since it’s closer to the equator. This means that with the harsh sun glare comes an orange glow that’s hard to avoid. I didn’t think about it at the moment (I was far too busy having fun), but as I began editing, I was hit with the hard realization that these may be hard to go through.

With the craziness of graduation and reconnecting with old friends, I didn’t get to look through the photos until I was on a plane back to Michigan. As I was going through them, two thoughts repeated in my head: 

1.) “these turned out great!”

2.) “how the heck am I going to get that sun glare out?” 

I will admit, I avoided really diving into editing for the first few days. I was dreading the work it’d take to edit the 100 photos I’d decided to keep, and wanted them to be absolutely perfect for the team. Several of the guys had already reached out to me saying how excited they were to receive them, and I didn’t want to let them down. But on Wednesday after work, I finally sat down and told myself I wasn’t getting up until they were finished. 

The first thing I did was focus on the colors. Usually, my style of editing consists in keeping the colors as close to reality as they were when I took the photos, with slight enhancements if needed. With the Florida sun sinking over the game though, most of the photos we’re just different shades of orange and yellow. 

Past just the colors were the shadows and highlights. I had to dim a lot of the whites and highlights to hide the sun glare and maintain the natural shadows in order to show the movement and dynamics of each scene. 

Editing for me usually takes no longer than 10 minutes per photo, but it easily took me a few hours to even find a direction and editing style that I felt did justice to the sport, and to the guys playing it. 

It took a large amount of surrender for me to break away from my usual editing style and branch out into something new. What I found though was, once I discovered a style that matched the moment, I began to love the unique beauty this night featured. It definitely wasn’t my normal way of going about photos, but once I accepted the fact that these scenes were beautiful in their own right, I began to love them. 

Not only did this experience make me much more familiar with Adobe Lightroom (which is knowledge I could always use), but it allowed me to realize that I can branch out in my photography more than I thought I could, better serving my clients and offering more options for their unique visions. The frisbee guys ended up loving the photos, which made me even more secure in the job I had done. What started as a random frisbee photo opt turned into the perfect opportunity to try out some new editing styles, and I could not be more grateful for those guys, their love of the game, and the setting Florida sun.