Adidas Football – Super Bowl LIII Portrait Promo

The story behind this is complex and speaks to the effectiveness of a team. Shortly before the Super Bowl, Adidas Football asks Linden Collective to stitch together a group-photo of NFL players from preexisting images. It proves impossible for reasons ranging from incompatible focal lengths to varying depths of field to different lighting. So instead we go on the road and shoot it, from scratch. It’s a multi-city, multi-athlete project that calls for shoots in Green Bay, Boston, New York, New Jersey, LA, Pittsburgh, Miami, and LA again. Linden Collective's creative director Keaten Abbott and I come up with a lighting scheme that’s portable, repeatable, and lends itself to compositing. Ravens wide receiver Hollywood Brown is already in LA, and luckily, so is my friend and fellow shooter, Erik Ursin. Erik ends up photographing Hollywood in a hotel room. Erik and I tackle the next three cities as a team, myself acting as digitech. We get Deandre Baker in the lobby of his New Jersey condo building. Aaron Rodgers and Jimmy Graham in a glove store in Green Bay. James White and Sony Michel in the hotel where the Patriots are staying. Meanwhile, retouching pro Bill Nielsen is back in Portland already chipping away at post and design. After Boston, Erik and I split up and are shooting simultaneously. Him, shooting Xavier Rhoades, and me shooting Juju Smith-Schuster. Him, shooting Jen Welter, and me shooting Uncle Luke from 2 Live Crew. Etc. The original mission to composite a group photo worked as planned. But to us, the gems were the portraits we made after we got the necessary photo - when we switched it up, and went freestyle for the last 10 minutes of each shoot. Top lit, side lit, back lit, fired off some on film. There’s too many people to thank for this exciting project and for what I learned from them.