The META boys run a successful fitness studio in Chatham and kindly agreed to sponsor a page on the ABC Calendar for 2015. The photoshoot was carried out in their studio last August, where we recreated a fun homage to Ross and Phil’s favourite film, ‘Dodgeball’. The studio as large enough for us to carry out a number of stunts to photograph, but the photoshoot would only provide the beginning of the final image – the shot under the final edit on the left.

All the stunts we ran involved the ball being thrown into the air for the guys interact with – the shot we have in the final edit froze the ball in the air along with the ‘diving’ positions of Ross and Phil. The poor guys had to dive a number of times so we could be the perfect positioning for both of them as well as the ball. Luckily they had crash mats at their disposal to break their fall. Of course, the final photograph needed to strip the mats out as well as the background. By isolating the boys and the ball, I added a stadium crowd background, a series of banners between the crowd and the auditorium floor, as well as the floor itself.

One of the other stunts involved Ross throwing the ball at Phil with it hitting poor Phil’s face. I had to photograph the scene a number of times, so Phil really took a bit of a bashing for that image! What’s more, it didn’t even make the photo cut in the end!