Challenges and rewards
Tom Barnes talks winning awards with the Paralympic team for Rio 2016
In early 2016 I was commissioned to shoot the campaign for the British Paralympic Association for their groundbreaking Supercharge campaign. The shoot was going to be a week long, but when you are dealing with calendars of some of the world’s best athletes the amount of [potential] dates suddenly become reduced. In the end we had to shoot eight athletes over two days in two separate locations, which meant long days and moving fast!
After multiple meetings and discussing the brief we came to the decision to do one southern shoot in Guildford and one further north in Loughborough. We needed to shoot this early in the year and knew the weather would be a primary concern – on shoots like this I am constantly checking my weather app (Dark Sky) to check the rain and wind forecast.
I was after dark and brooding imagery and wanted to bring out bigger flashes, but due to the time restraints and needing to move quickly I opted for the Profoto B1 units and lit all the setups with either one or two lights.
We had a huge amount to shoot and in July or August it would have been easier, but in January we were battling fading light as the days were at their shortest. The long hours needed and short daylight available wasn’t the only problem – the weather didn’t play ball, so we were dodging around rain and sleet whilst shooting.
The kit required had to be relatively lightweight – I ended up using a couple of the Profoto B1s as they enable me to move really quickly. We also had all the kit loaded on to my Magliner and used it as a lighting stand as well to reduce setup time. Using the Magliner as a light stand base was a great idea, as it also meant we had to carry less sandbags to cut the weight back, which reduced our kit level even more! Two days and about 40 batteries later the shoot was wrapped and we could head back home and out of the cold – huge shoutout to my assistant Emma who didn’t complain once about the arctic conditions.
After we had chosen the images and I’d retouched them it was time to launch the campaign. It was incredibly well received which was a relief, and the funds raised were above all expectations. For the first time ever I decided to enter into some competitions with the work and to my surprise it won Gold in Graphis and
Best in Category at the AOP Awards among others! I’ll look back at this shoot as one of my favourites of my career.