Behind the scene.
On 28th of November I had a workshop in partnership with Nikon Bulgaria and Dynaphos.
We had discuss this idea for quite some time and it supposed to happen earlier through out the year, when the weather outside was better, but because we wanted to work with one particular athlete - Liliana Gerogieva, we had to postpone it a bit, because of her training schedule.
That brought other challenges - first to find good location indoor and second to work with light source from the training hall and flashes - in this case with Godox. We managed to secured a shooting spot at Arena Asics in Sofia. I’ve never been to the location before, but when I did my research it looked like a really nice opportunity to shoot.
One or two weeks before the shooting I went to Plovdiv to meet Lily. I wanted to get to know her, to show her my plan and ideas for the project, so that we can be on the same page when we start working. At first she told me that she was a bit nervous, but when I showed her my sketch book with what we are going to do, she became very excited and in that moment I knew that we will be able to create something good with her.
The workshop was not a
“how to” or “how you should do it” type of thing, but it was an example of my approach when working with a professional athlete. At first I thought that we will have the gym only for us, but when we get there, other people were training too. At the beginning they were few but during the workshop they became even more, which created another challenge, because people are running and jumping everywhere, coaches are telling me
“you can do this here, cause you are blocking our training” stuff like that, so in the limited time of 3 hours I had to think about many stuff and how to isolate the athlete from the rest of the chaos that was happening in the gym around us.
In that kind of situations the more experience you have the quicker you will be able to see what will work in the limited amount of time that you have. For every thing that I wanted to shoot with Lily, I wanted to make sure that all the participants in the workshop will be able to test and make some shots for themselves too, which also takes time. I am not working on my own only with the athlete, so I also had to explain to them what am I doing, why I am doing it and of course answer their questions.
To be able to deal with that kind of situation it is a MUST to have a plan in advance what are you going to do, because in this way you can work much faster and you are more aware of how much time it will cost you to execute a certain idea that you had in mind. I was not able to execute everything that I had planned, but probably around 80% I managed to cover.
I know where Lily comes from, I researched her professional background and when I met her, her story became even more special to me. I quickly realised how big are her dreams and how dedicated she is to make them true, so I wanted to make her feel that she is already there. Before the shooting I called one of my friends - Stiliyan Georgiev, who is another professional athlete and a big champion in Brazilian jiu-jitsu. I was sure that being on the top and representing Bulgaria for many years he must have a national flag. What he gave me was more than I expected and it was not only a flag, it was the only national custom flag handmade by Elena Stambolieva in Ravnogor . When I told Lily to put it on her back and imagine a certain picture in her mind she burst into tears of joy. Now I am sure that it is just a matter of time for this dream to become a reality.
When I look at the final images, I am happy with the result, although some things I could have done better if I we had proper conditions to work and a bit more time. You can check the rest of the images on my main page under the COMMERCIAL menu.
P.S. All the BTS photos were taken from my fellow photographer Deyan Yordanov (@didoriginal) with Nikon F3/P shooting with 35mm film - Cintestill 800T and Fujifilm C200.
