We’re the first to admit that this one was a little outside our usual territory, but we were excited from the get go. And that ended up being exactly what made it work.
We were brought on for an editorial assignment with Marquette University, photographing point guard Junior Cadougan and his team for a piece about his journey, his philosophy, and the community he's built around the game. We met up with Junior and the team one evening during practice, and the energy in that gym was immediate. Loud, physical, alive. The kind of thing you feel as soon as you set foot into the building, long before you even raise a camera.
Our natural instinct is to work with available light as it’s where our work tends to feel most like itself, but a windowless athletic gym at night had other plans, and we made a quick call to bring in off camera flash. We started subtle with soft, complementary light that didn't disrupt the flow of practice. This worked well for the formal group and individual portraits of the team.
Once we finished these we pushed the flash harder, moved it direct and front-facing, and really leaned all the way into it. There's something about that harsh, unforgiving light against the intensity of a practice in full swing that just works— it matches the energy rather than trying to soften it. At one point Stef said outright that getting hit with a basketball or having someone fall on her was “more than welcome if it means getting the shot" and it almost happened more than a few times! The closer portraits landed well, but the photos of everyone playing, fully immersed in it, barely aware of us, those are the ones we still love and gravitate towards.
Sports photography isn't really our thing— beyond cycling, and a brief stint photographing a family basketball league as a teen, but we won't get into that— so there was something genuinely fun about bringing a non-sports eye to a sports assignment. No playbook, no preconceptions about how these images were supposed to look. Just a loud gym, a interesting subject, and a willingness to get in the way.
If you're a publication, university, or brand looking for editorial photography that brings a fresh perspective, we'd love to hear from you :)
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