Professional photographer and videographer Dale Travers has worked on a wide range of commercial projects for over a decade. His personal interest in the sport has led him to specialise in athletics campaigns. We caught up with Dale on the CameraPro couch to chat about how he broke into the highly competitive field of commercial advertising photography, how he keeps his studio mobile, and his general process for meeting a brief.
Dale began messing around with photography in the mid-’90s when his dad gave him his first camera. A keen rollerblader at the time, Dale chewed through rolls of film, trying to capture his mates in action. In 2007 he moved to London, continued skating and shooting, and picked up some wireless flashes, opening a new world for his photography. With the hazardous cables of his earlier lights gone, Dale was able to start shaping scenes and telling stories with his images.
From there, he moved to the United States and started working with professional rollerbladers. He began scheduling shoots and found his photos were turning out a lot better because of the pre-planning and collaboration of working with skaters who could reliably hit a predetermined mark.
Although he loved photographing rollerblading and skating, Dale found little money in it, so he returned home to Australia in 2012 and landed himself a job assisting. There he began learning the ropes of commercial photography. Over the following several years, Dale progressed from assistant to professional photographer, picking up a wealth of knowledge along the way.
With the fundamentals locked down, Dale decided to refocus on sport, so he invested in a bunch of gear and started photographing his mates in action. Through a mutual connection, he met professional triathlete Sarah Crowley. The two clicked and began working together to produce a large volume of content for Sarah’s sponsors and profile.
Dale’s go-to camera is the Canon 1DX Mk II. He loves it because it’s ‘built like a tank’ and has never failed him.
'The batteries last all day, you can drop it, it's basically built for the environment that I work in, a lot of lying down in the dirt or on the ground or anything like that.’
Recently Dale picked up the Canon EOS R5 to shoot video and slowly make his way into mirrorless and the new technology. After using the 1DX for so long, Dale says the R5 feels slightly like a toy. But he notes that the ‘brain in it is huge’, and as he moves into high-end international campaigns, the 45MP files from the R5 will be essential in meeting the resolution requirements for billboards and banners.
Dale creates all of his content with three standard lenses and one tilt-shift. He primarily uses the EF 16-35mm f/2.8L as a storytelling lens. The wide field of view is ideal for showing an athlete moving through a scene and allowing plenty of negative space for advertising.
He also has the old version of the EF 50mm f/1.2L and EF 70-200mm f/2.8L and remarks that the focus is spot-on in any environment despite being run over by a car and dropped a few times.
For architectural work and panoramas, Dale uses the TS-E 24mm f/3.5L tilt-shift to keep the lines straight and introduce particular effects by adjusting the focal plane.
Mobility, reliability, and power are essential for shooting on location, so Dale travels with four Profoto B1Xs. The high-speed sync of the units allows him to shoot at much faster shutter speeds, cutting down the exposure in the sky for a more dramatic look. He also has a couple of the smaller Profoto B10s for highlighting small details where the B1X would be too powerful.
Most of Dale’s sports shoots are shot on location, where he tries to emulate the natural look of the sun. He regularly uses the Profoto OCF Zoom Reflector as it gives an even spread of light with a bit of contrast and boosts the power of the light by an extra stop making it an excellent choice for his style.
‘In a scene where someone's running through, you want to introduce light, but you don't want it to be too artificial and too stylised. So you want to show that there's light there, but it's not like, oh, he's actually put a flash to the right.‘
For portraits requiring a slightly softer light, Dale will reach for the Profoto OCF Beauty Dish, aptly named for the flattering light it produces, ideal for highlighting and shaping a model's face.
Dale also has the Manfrotto compact stackable light stands and an array of Profoto OCF modifiers and scrims that he has selected primarily for long haul travel. He tells us that their compact and collapsible design allows him to shove modifiers into his bike bag and down the side of backpacks when he travels. Since Dale has just spent 14 months touring the US and Europe, it’s easy to see why keeping his kit as light and compact as possible is crucial to him.
‘Everything's got to be quite small; it’s the way I go now because we travelled with ten bags when we came back to Australia, like two bikes, all my modifiers, all my flashes, so you've got to be quite small.’
Every campaign is different but usually begins with a client conversation to discuss concept and art direction. Pre-production can take days and sometimes weeks of back-and-forth emails with clients. But Dale admits that's how he likes it because then the client gets precisely what they want, how they want it, and when they want it with no surprises.
With that determined, Dale then sets about location scouting. He uses an app called Sun Seeker to see precisely where the sun will be at a particular time and maps the scene out on his phone ahead of the shoot. Then he develops a lighting plan that ties together all of the storytelling elements commercially.
‘Shoot what you love, I think. So if you love running, go shoot people that run … because I think if you're going to be out there lying in the dirt for a couple of hours, or whatever it is, you're going to really want to shoot that image.’
Check out the entire conversation here to learn more about Dale and his photographic process.
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