Alim Kassim Photography Blog » People, Portrait, & Wedding Photographer

A couple weekends ago, my cousin came by to visit us for the afternoon. This kid is truly an amazing tennis player; it’s amazing to see how much he has progressed over the years.
As the weather outside was pretty cold, we were pretty much left to entertain ourselves indoors. So, I figured why not do an impromptu shoot!

Being the great sport that Aman is, we decided to do a shoot focused on the subject of tennis…and believe it or not, all within the confines of our living room (which btw, is a bit bigger than a matchbox!).
As there was a bit of furniture in the room, I knew I’d be moving a few things around & shooting this against my Botero background.

In my head, I envisioned photographing Aman through his tennis racket. I knew that I wanted to illuminate the strings on the racket, but without them being too distracting.
I tried lighting the strings from head-on, the sides, below, and even from above, which is what I ended up using.

After a few test frames, I realized that having Aman hold the racket was causing some problems with lighting on the strings. So, I rigged the tennis racket in a clamp, which was affixed to a spare light stand. This helped keep the racket nice and straight, which helped keep the lighting on the strings consistent. This allowed me to focus more on Aman, who happened to be sitting on our make shift seat (aka cat perch).

Once the lighting was locked in, I took a handful of shots. Processing was pretty straightforward on both images. For the first, I wanted to do something a bit different and to tone the image in a way that looked like the color of a tennis ball (without being over the top). Below are two of the final images from the shoot:

Enjoy!