While I have been photographing portfolio sessions of people for a number of years, if you look at my work, you will see that the vast majority are women. So when a friend suggested me to her friend I jumped at the opportunity.

Simon is a personal trainer who operates out of a local gym. He has a background in marketing so when we initially met he had some very clear ideas what he was after, and also what he did not want. We agreed to do two separate shoots, one being in a studio and the second in the gym.

For the studio shoot I had originally booked a place in Upper Hutt that is set up as a full photographic studio. Unfortunately it is based within one of the grandstands at Trentham racecourse and on the Tuesday before the shoot I discovered that another event being held that weekend would make access to the studio virtually impossible.

I then reached out to Freya who runs Poleclass.co.nz in Wellington. I had shot in her place a number of years ago. While the space did not have all of the gear of my original choice it had large spaces as well as large area of natural light which I ended up utilising for the shoot rather than relying on the studio strobes.

We finished the shoot in an alleyway behind the studio for a completely different look. Simon had asked for a quick set of images for social media so that night I selected and processed 7 images to send him.

For impact I decided that most of the images from the first shoot would be presented in Black & White.

The second shoot took place a fortnight later in a central gym. We scheduled it for late in the evening to ensure that less people would be around. For this shoot I initially started using a single speedlight with an umbrella, however that started to give me some issues in that it would not recycle quick enough. Eventually I ditched the light and cranked up the ISO and shot with the available light knowing that as the images were being shot in RAW I could correct the colour cast that the fluorescent lights would introduce. This worked out quite well.

Simon appears to be very pleased with the images that he received.