Ben McKeown

Just a few days after spending a night at Hillside, I had the privilege of meeting eight area high school girls basketball players.  We met at the local YMCA for a cover shoot for Vype Magazine

As I’ve indicated before, I’m a huge fan of high school basketball.  It was a pleasure to meet each of these girls, all of whom have demonstrated an admirable level of skill and leadership for their respective teams.  If you’ve watched the aforementioned multimedia, you may recognize one of the girls from this shoot, Kelsey Evans of my high school alma mater, Wakefield.

As always, lighting these shots was an interesting challenge in a gym.  With only about 30 minutes to unload/set up/prepare, a lot of the procedure was improv.  For the group shot shown here, I lied on the floor (looking quite foolish) with a softbox just to the right of my head pointing upward towards the girls.  The basket is lit by one light pointed in its general direction.  Unfortunately, without time to adjust significantly, much of the wall behind the basket is also lit; I would’ve liked to have toned this down a bit.  However, with time restraints also come creative restraints - in addition to the group shots, we had to finish 8 individual portraits (a few displayed here).

I expect the shots to yield another intriguing Vype cover.  This issue is due out in January.