Olympic Hopefuls - Uni Project

I decided for my final project at uni that I wanted to incorporate it with the upcoming London 2012 Olympics. Sport is something I enjoy anyway so to link this in with photography is pretty handy! I looked at a lot of photographers work throughout the project, with the main influence being David Clerihew in my final results.

These 2 images are apart of the campaign he did for Adidas, which is the same sort of results I wanted for my images. I like how he had lit his subject and the way he is angled slightly below them brings out a lot of power in the person. The first shoot I set up a backdrop in an old army camp room, for the second shoot I ended up doing it in a convent in London. And for the rest I went up to Loughborough and set up camp in the hotel room.

I'm pretty please with my final outcome, I think I'm finally getting there to my lighting style and how I want my images to be.I went in search of the rising stars that would be competing in the Olympics come 2012. To begin with I found it quite difficult, messaging every club for each sport and only getting a couple of responses if any! At one point I didn't think it was going to turn out how I wanted but eventually one said yes, then the rest began to follow. Here are 2 examples of how I used the influence of Clerihew within my work.

I took hundreds of shots with them in different positions, but for me the ones that worked best for the brief I had set myself of photographing Olympic Hopefuls worked best when they were looking away from the camera. This way it creates a somewhat vulnerability factor. I had 6 images in total for the final series which is aimed at being an advert for London 2012.