Along with photos of Michael Jordan with his tongue out and distorted high divers in mid-dive, we can add CrossFit exertion portraits to the sports face hall of fame.
“Originally the series was called ‘The Puke Shoot,’ but my agent thought I should change it,” says photographer Philip Haynes, 26, who lives in London.
Instead, the series is called The Crossfitters and captures athletes undertaking the grueling workout regimen in mid-lift.
Haynes says the lifters don't usually grimace quite that much, but he asked them to let it out for the sake of the photos. To capture the intensity, he used a Nikon D800, which has a 36.3 megapixel sensor. He also set up several lights, which added contrast to all the various sections of the lifter’s face as they contorted through the lift.
After the shoot, Haynes spent hours in post-production highlighting everything from sweat to individual hairs on the lifter’s faces.
“All my work is very considered,” he says. “I pay attention to everything.”
Haynes, who makes his living as a sports and portrait advertising photographer, says the lifters were a personal project but the photos are representative of who he is as a sports shooter. He dislikes the kind of sports photography that’s glossy and makes athletes look like airbrushed superheroes. He wants his photos to be high quality, but not so worked over that they become fake.
“Even though they’re advertising shoots, I’m always trying to capture as a real moment as possible,” he says. “I want to capture the emotion of whatever those people are going through and I want people to look at the pictures and feel some of their pain or excitement.”
