AFC Bournemouth Away Kit Studio Shoot.

When AFC Bournemouth got in touch to shoot their 2022/23 Away Kit at our studio in Bournemouth and asked us to collaborate not only with lighting design but work together on ideas for the set, along with gaffa for their production team, we were properly excited.

Head of Brand and Creative, Matt Payne and Lead Designer Chris Payne had a clear initial direction for the set based on what they wanted to achieve from their shoot. After throwing around a few more ideas for the set and lighting design, we came up with the idea of combining both colorama and washing our white infinity cove with colours similar to those featured on the kit.

We really enjoy using a lot of colour, particularly creating gradients between two contrasting or complementary colours. So when I saw the kit was an awesome, eye-catching mix of purple, blue and pink, it really got me excited to go to town with these colours within our set.

For the background we used a pink ‘Carnation’ Colorama (2.55m x11m) which was placed within our white infinity cove. The colorama was placed ‘backwards’ on the stands in order for the bottom to curl back away from the front of the set, creating a subtle scalloped edge at the bottom.

Behind the colorama, the white cyclorama was lit from the right with one Aputure Nova P300c in HSI mode, set to similar pink to that on the kit. And again from the left with another P300c in HSI set to a similar blue colour. Together these two created a very pleasing gradient that mirrored the kits scheme. We also had a Arri SkyPanel S30 and Amaran F21c throwing a bit of blue light onto the pink colorama.

One of the challenges was creating a lighting plan that would work for both their photographer and their video crew. This meant trying to be as smart as possible with our combination of strobe and continuous lighting. Switchover times also need to be a minimal as possible, with limited time to shoot each player we needed to ensure going from stills to video was as quickly as possible.

With this in mind, we decided to keep almost all the lighting the same, except our key light and our kicker light.

**For video, our key light was an Aputure 600D Pro with Light Dome Mini II, set to around 40% power. For wider shots (two or three players on set) we used the Light Dome II and Light Dome 150.**
**The kicker was another 600D Pro with 30x120cm stripbox. Our hair light was an Aputure 60d with barndoors on a Manfrotto boom.**

For photography we kept the modifiers exactly the same, just had another duplicate setup but using Godox AD600 flash heads instead. Having double meant we could quickly wheel out the continuous light and wheel in the flash within a few minutes, keeping change over time to an absolute minimum.

The concept was to shoot in a ‘behind the scenes’ style format, which also meant areas outside of the set could potentially appear in shot. To prevent these areas beyond the cove from looking too dark or contrasting too much with our well-lit set, I placed a range of smaller RGBWW lights within the space, including Amaran T4c, T2c tube lights and Aputure MC. In the kitchen, behind our false window was a Falcon Eyes RX-120TDX flexible bi-colour panel.

The day itself was quite possibly one of the most fun shoots we’ve had the pleasure of working on. The team at AFC Bournemouth are a really great bunch with an excellent professional, yet relaxed and fun style of working. The players themselves were super-professional and they made working with them a laugh, which I think comes through in the shots and video content.

Also, it was a great opportunity to finally get the chance to throw some colour around the studio!

Thanks again to AFC Bournemouth for having us involved and for using our Studio.

View more of the photography over on the AFC Bournemouth website by clicking here and check out the video by clicking here