Ottawa Commercial Portrait: Jonathan Chant, Fitness for Freedom

My friends over at MediaStyle called me in to cover some stills for a commercial video shoot they were on. In-between takes, I was to create some portraits to update photography for their client Jonathan Chant, CEO of Fitness for Freedom. Jonathan and his team are personal trainers who make house calls, trying to keep people fit and healthy without a butch gym attitude.

There were a few technical hurdles to get over, and it’s great to have technology on my side. First of all, being able to shoot with my 5DMKIII on “silent shutter” mode allowed me to take the stills during the shoot without interfering with the audio of the video. This saved a bunch of time, as I’d normally have to go in and take the stills before or after the video, and basically ask Jonathan and our model to re-enact what they had already done. It made for a much more fluid environment (though I did still have to make not too much noise myself).

Second, Jonathan had previously been photographed in a stronger more “beefcake” like style. While the work was great and it made him look really cool, it wasn’t the approachable “in-home” kind of look that would help prompt his clients to invite him over. We took a number of stills outdoors with very soft light, but I couldn’t resist using this incredible blue wall at the house as a background, and hit him with my favourite portrait lighting combination. I used the orbis® ring flash to get light right into his eyes and under his brow to make sure Jonathan had a light, approachable face without too many shadows.

It was a fun shoot, and I love working with the crew at MediaStyle, I was especially pleased to be shooting with their hot (constant) lights, which meant I didn’t have to keep tweaking my own flash-based setup. I did take one of the portraits I shot like above, but pushed it a little more in post. If you want to check that out it’s up on Flickr.

Posted on Tuesday, September 3rd, 2013 at 8:32 am. Filed under: Commercial, Portraits Tags: Commercial, Commerical, Fitness, Mediastyle, Ottawa, portrait RSS 2.0 feed.