The last gymnast that I was asked to photograph was probably one of my favorites at the whole summit! It was World Champion Vaulter McKayla Maroney and as soon as we met, I knew that we could create some pretty awesome photos! McKayla has such a fun and bubbly personality, I could definitely tell that she wasn’t shy about having her photo taken! In fact, she was up for all of my crazy ideas and she looked great in all the shots!
Special thanks to my buddy Ford McClave for a few of these behind the scenes shots! In this one, I wanted to use the ringlight to bring out McKayla’s eyes. I love the way the red and blue background complement her top as well! As you can see from the setup photo on the left, that light is VERY bright, but it makes for a more fashion forward look.
Next, we did a few fun shots with the balance beam. Since McKayla was sitting up on this one, it was necessary to have my back kicker lights vertical. I also placed the the stand up reflector in close for fill light.
This is probably one of my favorite shots from the whole summit as McKayla said she could jump up for one. At first, I thought to myself, yea yea, that won’t look good because her body positions would be all over the place in the air and her hair would be in her face, etc… Well, we tried it and I was blown away at how she was able to have her arms and legs so PERFECT in the air! So, I had her do it a couple more times where her hair would fall in the right place and the results were stunning!
You can see the setup shot on the left below and the result on the right.
This shot was so cool, I had my retoucher Jennifer work on it and this is what we came up with for an Art Print… AMAZING!
We then went outside for a few casual ones… The sunlight was reflecting off the wall and it gave us a pretty fill light for McKayla’s face on this one.
OK, McKayla might kill me for posting this one, but I think it totally shows her fun personality!
And here were a few published articles of McKayla with my photos I found as well…
I was so happy that all these girls brought home the Gold and just bummed that I couldn’t make it over to London to witness it first hand. Maybe Rio in 2016? Congrats again McKayla!