Being someone who loves fitness and works out 4-5 times a week, I was very excited to help D1 Sports build a catalog of images for their franchise of over 25 locations. D1 specializes in preparing people of all ages to be elite athletes.

I’ve been doing sports photography for over 15 years, most of it staged shoots like this one. But I’ve also captured athletes competing in live events such as when I shot the X-Games for 2 years. Whether staged or live action, I learned a huge skill shooting sports photography, and that is, how to perfect the art of timing.

When you’re shooting an athlete you have to hit that precise moment that will become frozen in time as “the shot.” I took the principals of sports photography and applied them to working with people in all situations. So now when I’m shooting a person, I’m fully aware of his or her unique and individual timing.

No two people move with the same rhythm and it’s a photographers job to read each person’s timing to make sure the moment captured is the best one.

For this shoot we used actual D1 members rather than models and we shot this at their Nashville/Franklin location.