Professional sports photographer James Quantz Jr. just shared another fantastic behind-the-scenes video of his work with the Naval Academy in Annapolis on their yearly release of Marine-inspired football uniforms.
Two Days of shooting
Quantz takes us all through the two long shooting days starting from his choice of gear all the way to lighting, the team, and more.
For the first day of shooting (inside), Quantz used two lights with reflectors relatively high on either side of his subject/s for the edges (with another two to add some additional light). In the front, there was a strobe with a beauty dish which was later changed to a mid-size umbrella with another strobe with an umbrella for the main fill.
The uniform this year was tricky from a lighting standpoint – the uniform itself is dark blue but the helmet is white. Getting the full details of both in one go is not simple (and done mainly by making sure those top lights are not too “hot”).
The main image from the first day of the shoot (used with permission; Credit: James Quantz Jr.)
The shoot itself had to be done (like a lot of unreleased product shoots) in secrecy which meant a closed set but might or might not have any bearing on the choice for the second day of shooting which was done in a remote location at night.
The second-day shooting was a lot more basic in terms of lighting but presented other challenges. The main idea was to capture the uniform on a player with some Marines in the background in a fighting uniform.
For the second shoot, Quantz used 4 lights – two in the back with reflectors corners as the edge of the player and some background, the third was on a handheld stand with an operator who was guided to direct it as the player moved around (assistants are always important for these shoots). The last light was behind Quantz for some additional fill.
Uniform with a flag (used with permission; Credit: James Quantz Jr.)
As for the camera and lenses – Quantz used the Canon EOS R5 and both the 24-70 and 70-200 and most of the images were captured as is in-camera with relatively less Photoshop “magic” and Quantz also provides a useful tip near the end of the video – if you are working on stills around the same time the video team is shooting – try and capture some extra shots – these can be a nice bonus for your clients.
Sports uniforms and soldiers (used with permission; Credit: James Quantz Jr.)
Not the first time
This is not the first time that Quantz has been working with the Naval Academy. Last year we posted his video looking at some of the behind the scenes work he did for the American sports equipment company Under Armour and the Army-Navy football uniform which at the time was made to celebrate the Naval Academy’s 175 historic landmark.
For more on sports photography please check out our special sports photography subsection here on LensVid. As always, you can find many more behind-the-scenes videos on the BTS section here on LensVid as well as more BTS videos by Quantz.
Iddo Genuth 
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