On Wednesday I spent the afternoon at Naperville Central with this year's Sun Player of the year, running back Matt Randolph.
Every season the Sun picks a student athlete who has excelled both on the field and in the classroom to bestow the honor.
It's always fun finally getting to meet these kids after photographing them playing all season.
We try to make the portraits something fun and different that they can be proud of having and reflects them and their accomplishments.

Read on and see how this photo that ran in the paper came together!

After starting outside on the field, Matt and I headed into the locker room, I knew I wanted to do something with the rows and rows of red lockers at Central.
After finding the section I thought would work best I took the first frame to see what the existing light looked like:

I then started by putting some lights in the lockers to add some life and texture to the background:

Next Matt steps in and I put a single light to my left pointing right at him. This shot is to see how all the lights are looking more than anything else:

Now things start getting interesting, I put a light on the bench directly behind Matt to help separate his red jersey from the red lockers:

The image was looking a little to bright and open for my taste. I wanted the photo to be more dramatic and have a bit more edge to it. To achieve this I moved the light that was pointing at Matt from my left into a locker to my right:

Getting closer...I had placed the light too high which was causing Matt's eyes to fall into a shadow...not pleasant. I left the light in the same locker, but moved it down about a foot. I also told Matt to raise his head up just a little bit to help get more light in his eyes:

Toss in a little contrast bump afterwords and that is how the photo you see in the sports section today came to be!