dallas photographer who shoots video too!
If you need professional commercial photography content you probably need video too. With todays social media platforms, video is king. Having a photographer who also is a master at video is like having pocket aces! Not only does it save you money, it makes booking shoots much more streamlined. In this post I'll show you the photos and video we took for Element Wellness, a gym in Addison Tx.
Dallas commercial gym photographer
We recently did a photo and video shoot for Element Wellness a high end fitness club. We began with a tour of the gym and I made some photography suggestions that I thought would fit their elevated, high end look. So I proposed we would do composite photography where we put light on every piece of gym equipment individual so they all stood out in the moody gym. I got inspiration for this type of photography from hotel lobby and bar imagery like the few examples below done by www.morismoreno.com/
Notice how photographer Moris Mereno uses the technique of moving a small light source around to light every chair individually to create shape and dimension while maintaining shadows consistent with the overall available light.
dallas gym photographer art via light
Here are a few examples of the photos we took. In each photo you're looking at 10-20 images taken and combined into one image! This process takes a lot more time than your regular HDR process (real estate). This process allows you to add light dimension to the individual elements instead of globally. The advatage to this is that you get to add highlights to each element where you want it and from what direction. This brings out the texture and shape while keeping the overall scene moody like how this gym is in real life.
We shot every room the gym wanted to showcase and highlighted some of the key gym machines and features unique to their brand. We started with the wide establishing shots of the gym workout space then moved in tighter to get some of the more unique machines.
Every soft highlight you see was created by holding in a small softbox with a grid on it, on a portable wireless light held in by my assistant. We start with a base plate shot which is a shot of the room without any lighting effects. This image alows me to mask out my assistant when he is in the shots.
Here is an example of the raw base shot for the cardio room
Once we have our composition set and base plate captured using Capture One Pro, we don't touch the camera and the camera is on a sturdy tripod and manually focused. My settings were F8, ISO 500 and 1/4th of a second shutter speed on 16mm focal length.
I chose 16mm because I believe thats as wide as we can go until we start making the room look bigger than it is.
Now that we have out base plate we can begin taking shots from my computer with my assistant holding in a light where I direct him
Here we see him top lighting the arms of the treadmills one at a time. We did this for every treadmill and machine in the base plate shot.
We also cast light on the ceiling architecture to bring out the wavy wood installation.
Here we have the final results of the composite after layering in each shot in photoshop
In summary
Compositing technique allows the photographer to capture light in places within the shot that wouldn't normally be there. This opens up a world of possibilities for lighting some of the most challenging spaces. Just like in this moody gym where there was hardly any light, using the compositing technique turned a gloomy space into a well lit and dynamic image. So next time you're asking yourself the question, "how to do composite photography?", come back to this blog post for guidance.
Now for the video!
Of course I didn't forget to show you all the video of the gym as well. Below is the video we shot and mainly used the gyms available light. Our camera was the Canon R5 C with a 24 mm 1.4 prime lens all sitting atop the DJI Ronin S2 Pro.
The benefits of hiring a hybrid photographer/videographer
Let's say you hire a photographer who charges you to load gear, travel to your location, unload and set up all just to only take photos. What if he also knew how to do video within the same time frame, doubled your content for only a fraction of the cost? Wouldn't you be looking for a hybrid photographer too? Element Wellness hired us to shoot photos and videos for the price of 1 day rate! Not only did they receive beautiful photos of their new facility, they also received a gym tour video and all the content was delivered within 1 week.
So the next time you're looking for a commercial photographer in Dallas, be sure to consider hiring one who also does video. We promise, you will probably need video at some point and why not save some time and money while you get both!
Be sure to follow the blog for more insights on how we at Art Via Light, elevate your brand!
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