Morton Visuals had the opportunity to photograph the gentlemen of Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity for their website and upcoming brochures. Creative Director Brandon Weghorst brought together SAEs from three San Diego universities for these images illustrating the diversity of the fraternity.
William Morton photographs SAE brothers from three San Diego universities for Sigma Alpha Epsilon.
With the expected use including magazine, brochure and website, the plan was to photograph each man in a variety of full-length poses on a clean white background (to enable clean knockouts for compositing). Morton Visuals selected the San Diego Photo District for this job, due to it’s huge cove, ample space for a dozen or more portrait subjects, and ease of access. We needed to match images previously captured at a Chicago convention, which were tone-mapped for an HDR look. For this reason William decided to use a silver PLM 86″ umbrella for a punch of contrast, and then filled the shadow edge with a large white sheet of foamcore to control the contrast. Lighting was provided by Dynalite power packs and heads. Images were captured in Lightroom 5, with a large monitor rotated to vertical to show each capture full-screen.
Each man was talked through a variety of poses, each eschewing stiff formal poses and displaying a casual and happy personality. Each man lived up to the fraternity’s “Be True” ideal, and were indeed a gracious bunch. Thanks to the gentlemen of SAE!
