Doing fitness shoots brings a whole new dimension to portraiture because you’re working with such a determined individual, and their fire kinda rubs off on you. There’s always a reason people train to look a certain way and call it passion, or plain wanting to be much healthier, they train with a certain goal in mind, and a toughness that you can only admire.
It’s been wonderful to photograph over such a big area in my career, the whole of Gauteng has been my playing field, and because I have a love for the East Rand people, going back always has a fond feeling within me.
Photography has so many technical ways of doing so many different things, and within a genre, there are a hundred ways of doing the same thing, in different ways. Either with some very moody lighting, or something much more flat, or in a certain way to highlight the subject and subdue the background….and with fitness, you already you know you’re working with muscle tone, and that has a certain shape, which is important to be highlighted.
With smart lighting, you can really help trainers to show off their physique and the hard work that went into it.
What I’ve always liked about my specific clientbase, and how I’ve been able to work, is that I photograph very real people. Mothers, and people telling me they are not photogenic, corporate, professional people, that need your guidance with posing – real people that do not have any formal posing training, that is not represented by an agency like models are… and this I feel, has made me successful and have had me build good rapport with many clients and beyond.
Any person would want to receive their photography images, and feel the very best job was done with that they had to offer, even if they feel it wasn’t much – they must look at their product and feel the photographer made more of it.
Fitness shoots is an end-result, of many months of training, maybe even years, and how that is now a visual reminder, and achievement, of what can be done, and what already has.
Yolandi Jacobsz, Specialized Photographer