Darren Lockyer

Canon 1D Mark 3
16-35mm lens

Thought I might put some info up about this shot as I keep getting emails about it and how it was shot. The image is of Australian Rugby League captain Darren Lockyer and he was nice enough to come into our office at the Courier Mail newspaper for the shoot.It took me a few months to organise a piece of toughened glass for him to stand on. Perspex was my first choice but really expensive and not in my budget. The glass was toughened and thicker than I needed but I wanted it strong. It was 1 metre x 1 metre square and 12mm thick or half an inch thick. I set up for the shoot on the roof of the office and used 4 saw horses to set the glass on. Each saw horse was about 1 and a half feet high. 1 horse on each side. this was very secure and stable but not as high as I would have liked. If done again I would want the level of the glass at least 3-4 feet high.Lighting was a little tricky. In lighting his feet I ran into the problem of reflection from the glass. To beat this I draped black velvet everywhere under the glass and poked an elinchom through a hole in the velvet off to the side. I then put a 1 metre square softbox at the glass level in front of him slightly tilted upwards. This worked well. Then finaly I simply squeezed between the sawhorses and poked my lens through the velvet to take the shot. See simple. Lots of fiddly work for this shot but it works well. The image was then cleaned up by a retoucher who did a sweet job.