WRU Stadium Billboard

Here's one of the billboards hanging in the Cardiff Millennium Stadium. This is a composite image from a photo shoot for Under Armour with the Welsh Rugby Union. Store-Age  put the composite together. This one goes down as my largest printed photo to date. It's around 10 x 80 meters huge. 

Stadium photo courtecy Under Armour.

Design by Store-Age Amsterdam.

Here's another version up closer. We shot 20 athletes in two days. Working with the WRU guys was great. These are the kind of gigs where you wake up in the morning smiling at the thought of getting paid to do this kind of work. I have photographed live action Rugby games, but had not had the chance to get rugby athletes in the studio. Watching them train felt like looking in on something medievil.

Fedex lost one of my lighting equipment bags so we really had to push things on set-up day to get local gear backup. I had amazing help from local Cardiff photographer Brian Cottam who also assisted me on lighting for the shooting. Thank-you Brian.

Design by Karina Engedal @ Under Armour

The Under Armour crew out of Baltimore worked the the styling, athletic moves, and general look and feel during the shoot. Working with this many athletes in front of the camera requires a team effort. No way in hell I could pull this off alone.

Here one frame as the athletes were shot. This gives an idea how much post production goes into the final design for this production.

I'll get more photos online to show the end results after the post production team is done with the images. For me, it's always interesting to see what comes out of the final design.

We used Profoto strobes and shot with a Canon 1Ds MK3 and mostly with a Canon EF 50mm 1.2 lens.

Concept for the photo came from Nate Shriver @ Under Armour

Here's one more from the studio. The photo was cleaned up a little and a vignette was added in post. I have not seen how Under Armour used this one. The plan was to use it as part of the campaign meant to launch the Under Armour WRU jersey.