Photo Guide: How I Shot The Trent Excalibur’s 2024 Media Day As Their Head Varsity Photographer
This guide will show you a step-by-step process for how I photographed a media day for the Trent Excalibur in the OUA as their Head Varsity Photographer. This article is meant to help other photographers who don't have much experience with media days, or to serve as some inspiration. This media day took place over the course of about 8 hours with dozens of athletes in Nozhem Theatre at Trent University. I will be going over both the mindset towards the day and the actual breakdown of each of the three stations.
Goal For The Day
Media days come in many shapes and sizes, but at its core it shares the same fundamental principle: showcase your team/brand in a way that aligns with your team’s/brand’s values and allows for maximal content distribution for social media, marketing, and athlete use. Specifically with Trent, we looked into building three stations that would allow us to cover all ranges of the athletic department’s needs. We landed on a plain white backdrop for full body and half body photos, a Trent Excalibur branded backdrop for some energetic/personality photos and a dark station with green tube lights for a more intense look. We felt that the variety of photos captured would give athletics a lot of content to work with for the year.
Goals For The Athletes
We wanted this media day to be the best one that Trent has ever seen. Historically the school hasn’t put on a big production for their media day, and we wanted the athletes to be just as excited to be a part of the day as we were to get content from it. We started by booking a large enough space so that the athletes had enough room to move around and mingle with others during the shoot, while being small enough to compress and maintain the atmosphere of it all. We landed on a space that is used as dance studio on campus (Nozhem Theatre) which was perfect, with most of the lights off and music blasting it made for a really fun environment. I highly recommend playing music at any media day where applicable, it really helps to cut the tension and awkwardness, especially if you’ve never met the athletes before, and it keeps the energy up. We had a set list of poses for each of the three stations but we also encouraged the athletes to share any suggestions they had, allowing them to feel more immersed in the day, and it gave an opportunity to show off each of their unique personality.
Goals For The Photographer
My goal for the day, obviously, was to photograph all of the athletes, but more importantly it was to make sure both the athletes were comfortable and having a good time and that athletics was happy with the content I was capturing. If your subject is uncomfortable it can really show in the photos. I made sure to chat with the athlete for a few moments before we started shooting to go over the “vibe” for each of the stations. I was very vocal throughout the shoot in telling them the exact poses we were after and was encouraging them to try any poses they were interested in. With athletics, I made sure to have a few meetings with them before the actual media day. I wanted to have a very clear direction to the day and wanted to ensure that they would be happy with the content I was getting and that they had a use for everything. I have had media days in the past where a lack of communication between the client and myself resulted in suboptimal photos (I want to try to avoid that as much as I can). In my mind there is no such thing as too much pre-shoot communication.
Flow Of The Shoot
I wanted the progression of the shoot to be as logical and problem-free as possible. I laid out the stations in a way that they had some breathing room in between them, that all cords or loose ends were tucked away to prevent any trips and that they naturally flowed into each other (like an assembly line). We started off with the white backdrop station as this is our baseline station. I am not asking them to be super energetic or super serious right off the bat, this is meant to be a warm-up station that gets the athlete comfortable having the camera in front of them. This station was also located next to a wall of mirrors allowing people to make sure they are presentable before the shoot kicks off. All of these stations were placed on the opposite side of the entrance so we didn’t have people walking across the sets as we were shooting. It also gave an opportunity to people that showed up early as to what the flow looked like. Having a smooth flow was something that I was really focusing on for this shoot to avoid any distractions and safety hazards for the athletes.
Here is the breakdown for each of the stations.
Station 1 - White Background
The purpose of this station was to get photos to be cut out and used in a wide variety of graphics for use on social media, scoreboard displays, marketing and general use. We wanted to have traditional poses here with a background and lighting that would make it easy for any graphic design work. These photos were not meant to be used as stand alone photos, this was agreed on that it would make for a boring photo as a stand alone and that there were better stand alone options from other stations to be used if need be.
Canon R6 (1/200, f/4, ISO 100)
Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8 IS II USM (shooting anywhere from 70-125mm)
2x Godox QT400II (1/32 power) with 24”x36” softbox on regular light stand set to chest height
Godox QT600II (1/16 power) with 36” octabox on 13’ boom stand set to approx. 10’
Godox XPro transmitter
Savage Seamless Pure White 107”
Savage Port-A-Stand 9’7”x10’7”
Athletes were instructed to complete a set list of at least 6 poses with sport specific poses as well. A mix of half body and full body shots were taken. Very minimal editing was required for this station.
Station 2 - Trent Backdrop
The purpose of this station was “personality” photos. I wanted the athletes to showcase some emotion and energy. I also wanted to give these a very paparazzi, sharp look that really popped with colour. These photos could be used as stand alone photos and for use in game day graphics and lineups. These were almost a carbon copy of the photos I did for the Peterborough Petes at their media day last year.
Canon R6M2 (1/200, f/2.8, ISO 100)
Canon RF 15-35mm f/2.8L IS USM (kept it mostly at 35mm)
Canon 600EX II-RT (shot in TTL mode with a +1 exposure setting and diffusion cover)
The athletes were instructed to complete a variety of fun poses (rock star, double bicep, screaming, thumbs up, holding signs/props, etc.) while mixing in their own suggestions. I placed the athletes a foot or two away from the backdrop to ensure that both them and the backdrop were properly lit and that a shadow was cast (if the athlete is standing too far away from the backdrop then they will be lit differently, I wanted to retain the whiteness of the backdrop hence why they are so close).
Station 3 - Dark, Tube Lights
The purpose of this station was to provide a nice contrast to the previous two bright stations. I wanted to have a high-contrast, intense station that could be used as stand alone photos. For this station I used four long colour adjustable tube lights as my accent lighting and a work light as my constant main light (my strobes and speedlites were being used at the other stations). I positioned the work light quite close to the athlete at a 45 degree angle as I wanted very little spill onto the background and a very harsh shadow across the athlete's face.
Canon R6M2 (1/200, f/2.8, ISO 250)
Canon RF 15-35mm f/2.8L IS USM (kept it mostly at 35mm)
4x 4’ Colour Adjustable Battery Powered Tube Lights
Husky Rechargeable LED Work Light
The athletes were instructed to keep a straight face, staring through the camera with strong, intimidating body language. I wanted to include some props like balls and sticks to add to the uniqueness of each sport.
Conclusion
All in all I was very happy with the photos that I was able to capture on this day. I was also really proud of the positive environment that we were able to create for the athletes, as it was a priority that they felt as comfortable and as engaged as possible. I am really looking forward to improving on this project for the 2025/26 Trent Excalibur season.
Special thanks to Angela O’Grady and Trent Excalibur for entrusting me with this project.