Sports and Fitness Photography with Carmen Morgan for Renew Houston

Fitness trainer Carmen Morgan, lit with a Profoto B-4 with a Plume Wafer 100 and a Lighttools grid.

Although we’ve been doing more commercial photography for the last decade or so, I’ve spent over 20 years doing sports photography – particularly sports portraits for magazines like The Sporting News and Sports Illustrated. I also used to do all the covers for the Houston Chronicle’s Health Magazine, but unfortunately, it went away a few years ago.

I was thrilled when I recently got the call from my friend, Features Managing Editor Melissa Aguilar to shoot for a new fitness product for the Chronicle titled “Renew Houston.” The new section would be a reboot of the Health Mag, but as a broadsheet section with fitness and health tips.

Our first subject was the stunningly beautiful and fabulously fit Carmen Morgan, a local certified fitness trainer with a ridiculous Instagram following of 620 THOUSAND followers. (@mytrainer carmen) She also has her own iPhone app available in the App Store.

I’m really into concrete backgrounds lately, so rather than shooting Carmen in a gym or crossfit studio, we decided to work with some superb concrete architecture generously provided by the Cindy Lisica gallery. Although we supplemented some of the photos with a Profoto B-4 strobe and Plume soft boxes, we shot many of the photos in the incredibly soft natural light tunnel at the gallery.

I have a dream to spend my wacation on the beach for a month. To have a beautiful shape I need to lose some wight. Phentermine is a real helper. It helped my sister to lose 10 lbs in two weeks. I hope to have the similiar result. Wish me good luck..

We sent Carmen through her paces in a couple of different outfits, all while Chronicle writer Joy Sewing interviewed Carmen about the keys to her success. It was a great shoot with great people. Hoping to hear more great things from Carmen in the future!

Carmen in her “Super Hero” outfit. Lit with a Plume Wafer 75 and a 30 degree Lighttools grid.
Carmen, lit with pure super soft natural light with my favorite concrete background.
Another available light portrait against the concrete – taken with a Canon 50mm/1.2 lens.