Lincoln City kit launch photo shoot - August 2020.

I wanted to share a bit of information about how we achieved the Lincoln City 2020/2021 away kit launch shoot. 

The club looks to create something slightly different for the kit launch every year. I’ve lost count of how many years I have been photographing kit launches for Lincoln City now. 

We had to think of ideas for this shoot, but due to the ongoing Covid-19 situation, the availability of players could potentially have been an issue. 

Over the past couple of weeks, we turned the home changing room at Lincoln City into a makeshift studio and produced a series of teaser images, plus took the opportunity to photograph new signing Conor McGrandles wearing the kit. 

We shot the black kit against a black background to make the images stand out. With a white main light to my right, and a red light at the back of to the left to create the red outline. 

Discussions between Lincoln City and Lincoln Cathedral had to take place. There are too many people involved to thank by name. But seeing two of Visit Lincoln’s partners working collaboratively is great. Especially as the team at Lincoln Cathedral has been working hard to achieve the ‘Good to Go’ mark from Visit Britain. 

Once we had got the necessary permissions for the shoot and arranged a date and time, the challenge was to work in as short a time period as possible, and as effectively as possible to limit the chances of people spotting the kit, whilst maintaining social distancing for everyone’s safety. 

Including Anthony, there were five of us on the set. So, being as discreet as possible isn’t the easiest when you are by a world-famous landmark that suddenly changes colour to red, you are standing with a footballer, and have a giant soft box that flashes and a second light that illuminates red every time you take a picture!

I planned to keep a similar style to the previous pictures shot with the red light in the back of the picture. There were a few reasons for this. Consistency, but red is the main brand colour of the football club. 

After working on getting Anthony’s positioning and the lighting set up, we then went for the real shoot. I don’t usually get nervous on shoots, but because I knew everything that went into making the shoot possible and the pressure of completing the shoot without passers-by spotting the shirt and leaking the design, I must admit I did feel pressured!

After getting the images from Minster Square, we moved all the lights and kit over to the entrance area to the Castle Square car park. This is where we produced the images where the Cathedral is set further back in the image. Once we’d got those images in the bag, the Cathedral returned to its normal white light; we packed the camera kit away and headed off, hoping we’d not been spotted!

Then, it was a waiting game for the reveal!

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