The final word

Lights! Camera! Mud! Joe gets down and dirty for his latest shoot…

Wonder women – Joe McNally shoots a tribe of Amazons (fitness athletes) thundering through a muddy forest

This was a corker of a job! The mandate, visually, was power and action, and the subtext was showing the highly accurate autofocus system of the new Nikon D850. Long lens approach, using the 200-400mm f/4.

It was a lighting challenge to be sure. We were in open shade conditions, under the forest canopy, so, if I lit just the runners, they would be charging out of blackness. Context is important here. So, the first step was to light the forest, which was done largely by deploying an array of Profoto B-4 units in the way back of the photo. All were gelled warm to connect a bit, colour-wise, with the very large bonfire we set up in the background of the muddy stream area we chose to work.

The lead light up front was a Profoto B-1, boomed out overhead of the runners, and firing through a gridded beauty dish. In addition, the runners are charging through a gauntlet of SB-5000 Speedlights, on each side of the creek, again gelled, and controlled from camera via the WR-R10 wireless transmitter. The whole setup took approximately five to six hours, total, to create.

Additionally, we threw up a 12-inch silk in the late afternoon light, and commandeered an old climbing wall as a backdrop. We then shot portraits of our wonderful endurance athletes in the aftermath of the mud bath they had been running through all day. These women were amazing – resilient and tough, and obviously were the key to the whole picture working so well.