This is the continuation from Part 1 of the wrestling team poster project done using a green screen. In part one, I explained how I used a green screen to put together a team picture.

The next stage was to provide some sample background images to be selected for the final poster.  I submitted for review, ten different images, from pastures to buildings, for potential candidates for the final poster. Coach Watson and his staff settled on the stormy clouds version. In addition, he let me know that one of the original wrestlers has transferred to another school and would need to be removed. With the removal of that wrestler, I then rearranged the other guys to balance it out.

Coach Watson wondered if I could add a bolt of lighting to the sky. I played around with Photoshop after Googling for help inspiration and technique from others. I personally like the poster without the lightning, but the coaches loved it, and wanted it included.

The final step was to add the text, and get the final OK.  Once approved, it was time to send the final image to the lab to print the posters.

This was a fun learning experience, and would gladly accept another project that could utilize the green screen.

In fact, I am going to start utilizing this technique for doing T&I (team and individual). No more ugly bleachers or gym stages in the backgrounds. Another benefit is that there is no need for everyone to wait around for the entire team to show up — I’m sure the parents will appreciate that aspect.

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My initial reaction was trying to find a large enough porch for a shot like this, but even more challenging would be to find a time when all these guys would be free at the same time (over the summer), to make the shoot. These are high school boys, many who have summer jobs, are on family vacations, or are more interested in hanging with their girlfriends. I offered up a different idea — shoot each wrestler individually with a green screen, cut them out and create the illusion of a group shot. Using this method, each wrestler would be lit under controlled conditions much easier than trying to setup lights on location. This approach provides a way to now come up with any background image to use for the poster. The other advantage, is weather is a non-factor, so no rainout date would have to be planned.

The last day of class for John Carroll was June 6, so I went to the school that day, setup and shot each wrestler that Coach Watson wanted to be in the poster, before they all spread like wildfire after finishing the school year.

At the top left, is a sample original image of one of the wrestlers shot with the green screen. I use a Photoshop plug-in called Primatte Chromakey for extracting the subject from the background. Once cut out, I processed each image to give it a slight grunge look rather than keeping the image looking like a portrait. The image on the left, shows an example of a processed cutout image.

The two main keys to getting a good cutout image is to light the background as evenly as possible, and to avoid the green light reflected off the background to spill onto your subject. For this shoot, I used two Canon 580EXs shot into 30″ umbrellas to light the background. The umbrellas were set at a 45-degree angle on each side of the background. The light was not as even as I would have liked, but it was close enough. To keep the spill to a minimum, I made sure my background was 1-stop darker than my exposure on my subject. In addition, I moved the subject 8 feet away from the background.  I lit each wrestler with one AB800 with large softbox to camera left and placed a large white reflector just out of frame camera right.

Once I cutout the 17 individual wrestler images, I arranged them to look as though they were all together for the group shot in a casual style. The idea was not to make this look like a high school team photograph. For the time being, I just threw in an image of an afternoon sky I had in my archives. My next step is to go on a search for other locations to shoot for using as the background for the poster.

This ends Part One of this assignment. Stay tuned for Part Two (the background and final product), which I hope to post in a couple weeks.

Saturday I spent the entire day at the 5th annual Mount Mat Madness tournament. This is one of the toughest high school wrestling tournaments on the east coast. For anyone who loves the sport of wrestling, this is a must-see event.

I was on-hand to shoot some key semi-finals matches as well as all of the championship finals matches.

The lighting inside of the athletic center at CCBC is nothing spectacular, so I brought my trusty speedlight setup with me.

A very nice balcony along one side of the building provided a great location for me to mount my two speedlights. Using superclamps, I could easily mount them to the railing on the balcony.

I set my two Canon 580EXs at 1/4 +0.3 power; 105mm zoom and pointed the lights slightly inward towards the center of the mat and aiming at the far end of the mat. You can see a view from the balcony as they were setting up the mat for the finals. Once the lights were in place, it was time to head down matside to get my camera settings worked out.

I snapped a few shots of people walking across the mat and by checking my histogram on the camera, determined ISO 400; f/5.0; 1/250s was pretty close. I set my WB to daylight and was ready to go.

The finals did not disappoint — there was some fantastic wrestling and I was able to watch it on my belly at the edge of the mat. I’m already looking forward to MMM-VI!