We have seen it all too often. The gym photoshoot where the athletes are sweating beyond belief in a dark scary environment with blue colored lights beating down through chalk dust in the air. It’s an all too easy shoot to produce and the resulting images look okay…. but do they help sell gym memberships?

Fitness photoshoot by Advertising Photographer Blair Bunting

The grungy environment look may move an energy bar or protein supplement off the shelf, but when it comes to getting people to join an athletic club, they don’t work. What tons of ad agency research shows us is that people want to see brighter environments with less sweaty people. The consumer’s eye draws symmetry and light to be comfortable. It may now sell a protein supplement, but it will not get the viewers’ foot in the door of a gym.

Fitness photoshoot by Advertising Photographer Blair Bunting

This is why for the EoS Fitness campaign we wanted to show light and focus, rather than strength and aggression. Instead of pictures of models lifting tons of weight and screaming, we would utilize more core exercises, complimented by a unique environment. To do this, the photoshoot had to be done outside and lighting would have to compliment the sun, for overpowering it would not be possible.

Fitness Advertising Campaign

There is only one way to do this type of lighting, and that is will an extremely fast native shutter sync. Fortunately we had both the Hasselblad H6D-100c and X1D-50c on hand, both feature a 1/2000th shutter sync (the fastest in the world). Having such a quick shutter let us, not only create images with the sun being balanced with strobes, but it also let us shoot wide open apertures at the same time.

Fitness photoshoot by Advertising Photographer Blair Bunting

On many of the images, strobes had to be used without modifiers because of the light loss that occurs when putting a box between the bare bulb of the lamp. Behind the camera assistants were often lined up on one side or the other (depending on light source angle) with Profoto B1’s heads and silver disk reflectors balancing out the sun’s light. Shutter speeds were used to control the tonal brightness of the wall and model’s skin tones, while fill was used to show details in the shadows.

Fitness photoshoot by Advertising Photographer Blair Bunting

The end result is a fitness campaign that doesn’t feel scary – it feels inviting. The form and lighting of the athletes is used as more of an expression than their strength. The result of this look led to a dramatic increase in gym memberships, the most significant in these coming from women. At the end of the day, it was a campaign that focused on what it would take to speak to the viewer, and it worked.