WORLD CUP 2022 - THE DREAM STARTS NOW
 Photographer Carey Schumacher takes SN behind the professional photo shoot of "World Cup 2022." Here are her notes:
Representing your country at the biggest sporting event on the planet...there's no bigger dream for a young athlete. While they're out kicking a ball around at the park with their friends, young soccer players across the nation imagine themselves not on gnarled grass but on the perfectly groomed pitch of the World Cup.
My son is no different, so when the folks at SoccerNation.com asked to team up on a new promotional campaign for the website launch, I knew exactly what we needed to do. During World Cup 2022, my son Matt will be a prime 23 years old, and he's dreaming of stepping onto the field in a USA uniform. He's not alone, that's for sure, so we got together a group of young dreamers in a La Mesa photo studio and created "WORLD CUP 2022-THE DREAM STARTS NOW." You'll see these images at all of the So Cal soccer stomping grounds soon.
Here's a behind-the-scenes look at how we created these images for all of the dreamers out there. With the "pump you up" music blaring from the stereo, Robert Benson and I set up the lights.
We used four lights: two strip lights on either side of the "mark" where each boy would stand for his shot. Rob used some large folding stand-up boards to shield the light from coming into the camera; one hair light up above; and one beauty dish in front of the boy (right behind me as I was shooting, set up a little to my left).
Here's a wide shot so you can see some of the lighting setup & Rob shooting some behind-the-scenes video:
photographer Carey Schumacher photoshoot from Herman Munster on Vimeo.
Here is Rob shooting the video.
Here’s how the shots looked straight out of the camera with the official World Cup Ball from Adidas:
Once I had the shots of each boy (USA, Spain, Mexico, Brazil), I worked in Photoshop back at home to create the promo material. The first picture is what the shot looked like directly out of the camera. In the second shot, I removed the background (lots of magnetic lasso!!).
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To add some dimension, depth, and life to the background, I added some grunge background using TOTALLY RAD DIRTY PICTURES on a blank image, then I brought that background layer into Photoshop and added some vignette with layer masks:
I ended up using that grunge background for the main promo poster with all four boys. I repeated the effects process for each boy and brought them all together into a single Photoshop file (it was BIG! 919MB!!), added some dimension and perspective to a duplicate grunge background layer (shrank it and added perspective). I progressively shrank each boy down the line to create the 3D perspective, then I added in the text and SoccerNation.com logo, and that became that promo poster you see there up at the top.
After I was done with that, I wanted to create some promo material using individual boys. I decided to add a little more pazzazz with some color effects. That was a fun little Photoshop trick that I learned in those tutorials up there. It involves the pen tool, “stroking the path,” adding some glow, and repeating the process to create all of the different lights. I then added some text for each boy to match his country colors:
 
I've already printed out a few poster-size prints, and they look AMAZING! Soccer families around So Cal should be seeing these promos around town soon, especially at Soccer Fanatic stores! Let us know when you see them and what you think.
And don't worry, girls! You haven't been forgotten! The FIFA Women's World Cup 2011 in Germany is right around the corner, and we've got BIG plans for your WORLD CUP 2023 promo!
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