Fitness Photographer NYC

Fitness Photographer NYC

My name is Vitor Lindo and I am BodyBuilding and Fitness Photographer working in New York, South Florida, Atlanta and South Carolina. My work has been featured in WOD Talk and other CrossFit national publications. Check out some of my work bellow:

Fitness Photography by Vitor Lindo

Being a Fitness Photographer means you work with a huge range of athletes  from several different sports ranging form CrossFit and Bodybuilding to Yoga and Pilates.

My favorite Sport to Photograph is CrossFit, which is a mixture between Olympic Weightlifting, Gymnastics and other workout techniques such as calisthenics, and Yoga. This mixture of Sports lends itself wonderfully to photography and I have been a CrossFit Photographer for the past 2 years, capturing CrossFit images all over the Southeastern US. You can see more of my CrossFit images here. 

And you can also check out a behind the scenes video bellow:

And here are some more examples from this CrossFit shoot:

CrossFit Photo by Vitor Lindo 

CrossFit Photo by Vitor Lindo  

Now lets get technical!! Keep in mind I am going to use my CrossFit photoshoot as the main example.

LIGHTING:

Most photographers use studio lights for their portraiture work because of the softness that can easily be achieve with a soft box, ring light or beauty dish. Well, this doesn't suit my style of Fitness Photography and the best tip I can give you is use harsh lighting. I used 2 Canon Speedlights 600 wight the canon radio transmitter and to 50" Appollo soft boxes using the split lighting technique. When I shoot women athletes, I ad a third light overhead to give them more fill since the split lighting is extremely harsh.

Another reason to use the speelights is portability, I can move them around easily especially since  I keep them on Quantum SC battery packs which are effective and last all day.

View the diagram bellow.

CAMERA:

In truth, if you have a decent camera, say Canon 7D and above, you should be fine. But since I shoot in pretty low light for my low key effect, I use the Canon 5D Mark III because it is the low light king in my opinion. This keeps my blacks decently clean, I personally don't mind grain since my images are gritty and contrasty. 

LENS:

I used the Canon 70-200mm F.2.8 II, this is one of the sharpest zoom lenses I've ever seen and the camera can focus in near darkness which, if you use speedlights you will run into that problem. As you can see form the diagram, I stand pretty far away form the subject and zoom to about 150-200mm. Another favorite lens of mine is the Canon 24-70mm F/2.8 II, this is probably the sharpest zoom lens I have ever used, aright around 35-50mm at f/7.1 she produces images like a prime lens.

EDITING:

This is where you are going to create your look for the images. Truthfully, if you capture interesting images you can go anywhere with your edit. I prefer the double raw stacking but I don't go as far as frequency separation because I want to maintain that gritty harsh lighting look so beauty retouching and dodging and burning are not a requirement. I normally shoot the clarity all the way up and saturation down using several techniques. I also like to finish many of my images with Nik software for sharpening.

Thanks for reading and here is some info about the author:

Vitor Lindo is a Fitness Photographer based out of Hilton Head, SC.  He is a native of Brasil, you can view more of his work here and contact him at vitorlindophotography@gmail.com or 310-913-7054 for any image licensing inquiries.