Behind the Scenes - Shadow Running

This wasn’t the particular image I had planned for the day, but I’ve had an idea similar to this in my mind for a while. I picked up the athlete, Will Goneau, from nearby this location, and thought if we had time we could check it out after we finished the original shot we planned to try this other idea I had.

We focused on the first shot, which was a top own running image in the forest. After we completed this image I asked Will if he was down and we went back to the underground parking lot.

We took a bit of time to find the right spot inside. I was looking for something with as clean a background as possible, so the shadow would be interrupted by cracks or imperfections in the wall. After we located the best area I had Will run through the scene a couple times to make sure I knew how it looked before setting up lights.

For this image I used two lights. The key light was set up first roughly 45 degrees behind Will as he ran. I had a high performance reflector to create the hard shadow on the wall. After reposition the light a few times and altering how far away from the wall Will ran we were able to get the right amount of separation of his body from his shadow.

The second light was position to light his face to prevent it from being sent into shadow by the key light. Positioned directly in front of him with a 20 degree grid it filled in the face, but the grid prevented any light from spilling onto the wall, or onto the ground creating a cross shadow.

The behind the scenes photo. The light on the right is an Elinchrom ELB 1200 with a high performance reflector and the light on the left is an ELB 400 with a 20 degree grid.

Once both lights were positioned it was a matter of having Will run through the scene multiple times to get both his stride and the shadow to look the best we could.

After I was happy with the first image we capture I found a various angle shooting through a window from a higher level of the parking garage. The lights were already position from the first shot so capturing this image was only a matter of having Will run through the scene a few more times.

After shooting I brought both images into Photoshop for retouching. I did a little bit of clean up up of cracks on the wall and some dodging and burning to amplify the shadows.

Gear:
Canon R5
Canon 24-105 f4 (56mm)
Elinchrom ELB 1200 (key light)
Elinchrom ELB 400 (fill light)
Elinchrom Skyport Transmitter Plus Trigger
Elinchrom high performance reflector
20 degree grid
Various Light Stands

Settings:
1/250 sec at f8.0, ISO 100

The second image from a level higher in the parking garage.