Rugby World Cover

Rugby World cover shot. Very very cool to get the cover shot for this mag during a world cup year.

Athletes: Shane Williams, Sam Warburton, Ryan Jones, Stephen Jones | Art Direction: Kevin Eason

ASM Clermont Auvergne 2012 Jersey Launch

It's official. ASM Rugby nouveau maillot 2012! ASM Clermont Rugby launched their new jersey and I finally get to post a few pics from this shoot. Here is a quick selection showing a few of the different setups we put together during the shoot. We shot on location in Clermont, France. Tight planning and great teamwork helped us pull off three locations. 

Jamie CUDMORE, Aurélien ROUGERIE, Anthony FLOCH, Julien PIERRE

Jamie CUDMORE, Julien BONNAIRE, Morgan PARRA

Jamie CUDMORE

We need to get the 'making of' film online for this shoot. I shot these close encounters with Jamie with a wide lens. He had to come at me pretty hard and close to get the effect we were looking for. Needless to say I ducked like a wussy when he came in. Looking through the lens of my camera it felt like he was going to crush me. Hope that comes through in the photo. This image is by no means polished. Just one that I really like. BOOM!

Welsh Rugby Union

These are first images to be released from our photo shoot with the Welsh Rugby Union. These big multi-day team shoots are a grind, but the long hours often help get a production team into a solid groove. When this happens we move beyond the planning stages and into the sweet spot where only one thing matters. Getting the pictures. I'd like to call it magic, but really it's just plain old hard work and a maniacal attention to detail. I'll post more images as I see them appear. Here's a screen-grab from the Under Armour UK website and a behind the scenes picture from the WRU kit launch.

Jonathan Davies

Paul James,  George North,  Ryan Bevington  |  (image courtesy of Under Armour UK)

The ingredients that go into getting the photo; art director, designer, marketing managers, sports marketing manager, assistants, athlete, a photographer and a really sweet studio. This is a little video from one of our setups in the WRU Barn. The other film camera is WRU filming a making of. Said it before, I'll say it again; I wish I could turn this place into my studio! It's good to dream..

Smoking out Louis Picamoles

My first serious try with a smoke machine. Everything cool until the smoke alarms went off! All it took was a couple of hours trying to get the perfect photo with Toulous forward Louis Picamoles.

Louis Picamoles

Mike Tindall

Spent a couple of hours working with Mike Tindall on our last visit the UK. Under Armour has created a campaign around Combines Training. So.. we put Mike to work and tried to get a little real world sweat happening under hyper real world studio lights and big megapixels. Good fun for me, Mike did what he needed to do to help us get our shots. We had plenty of room to set up big strobes inside a large indoor training facility. This allowed us to get Mike really well lit and have the backgrounds (ambient light) go to close to black. The artificial turf in the gym gave Mike the confidence to move with speed and power.

It was pretty much my dream setup to get some good high contrast sports photography going. I only wish I could take this gym back with me to Amsterdam and turn it into my studio. That and I'd like to have a DSLR with a flash sync above 1/200th please..

We were also in the UK for a campaign shoot with the Welsh Rugby Union. Once the  New Zealand 2011 World Cup Jerseys launch in July I will be able to post images from this shoot.

Jamie Cudmore protecting my house

This AD campaign is live in France. I posted a few more raw pictures from this shoot below this post. Always interesting to see what the picutres look like once they've been branded. 

Jamie Cudmore

Clermont Auvergne Rugby

Shooting Clermont Auvergne Rugby was in one word; Fun and a challenge. Okay, two words. The plan for this shoot was to spend two days on the beautiful pitch shooting action portraits of the Clermont Rugby athletes and a few Under Armour contract athletes. The weather had been amazing for weeks leading up to the shoot. Give this fact, we did not worry about the weather when planning our production.. After all, we only needed to have 5 or so 1600-2400 watt strobes connected to 200 meters of extension cables in the middle of the stadium pitch. This kind of strobe power is needed to knock out the (normally) harsh Southern France sun and get the look we were going for. 

It started raining from the moment we got our setup right and kept on raining until the moment we wrapped the production, at which point the sun came out. Shooting in the rain with big strobes is next to impossible. Needless to say we improvised like mad. We took the whole shoot under the stadium bleachers. Client and I made the decision to go for the 'industrial look' as opposed to the planned magic on the field. I would have loved to have two days on that stadium pitch, but I'm happy with the photos we ended up getting under the stadium. Here's a couple from day one. Many thanks to my band of lighting assistants (Victor, Levi and Joost) who helped get us through two hectic days. I shot a timelapse of the incoming storm as we were setting up. Should make for a good laugh (now). I'll post it when I have a chance.

Jamie Cudmore - Clermont

Jamie Cudmore - Clermont

Farid Sid - Perpignan

Jamie Cudmore - Clermont

Farid Sid - Perpignan

Clermont Rugby - Brock James, Aurelian Rougerie, Napolioni Nalaga

Making Of: Lying around under the bleachers.

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.

Rugby in Holland

I love shooting live rugby. The problem is that I live in Holland. The problem is not that there are no great rugby games happening in Holland. There are. The problem is that the economics of it do not really make sense for a photographer who makes his living from his pictures. There just are not enough news outlets or fans willing to pay for the images. I still go out and shoot games for the clubs for the pure joy of it. The game has so much to offer to the photographer and fan. The Dutch rugby league is made up of hardcore amateurs and some paid pros. I'm guessing the French or UK or SA or Kiwi rugby fans are going to say that the caliber of the game is much higher their country. That would be a true statement. It does not mean that the games in Holland are not fun to watch. They are! If you are living in Holland and have not gone to see one, I recommend you go. The games are from the heart and the teams go at each-other hard.


This shot was taken at the end of a game with AMSTELVEEN RC 1890 beating AMSTERDAMSE AC. This photo to me is all about 'To the victor goes the spoils'.

For the non-rugby fans, at the end of the game the losing team lines up and claps while the winning team walks through the lineup. It's a great sporting moment after what is usually a brutal and hard fought game. The next step after the lineup is shower and then clubhouse pub. The Amsterdam rugby club house is a great place to have a beer or 20.