It was a dream come true last spring for high school senior, team, and athlete photographer Jaison Sterling, who runs Rock Town Media in Little Rock, Arkansas. ESPN messaged him through his Instagram account, which is full of behind-the-scenes videos of his sessions, to create photos of athletes in the NCAA Women’s Final Four in Cleveland, Ohio, for use on social media and in ESPN broadcasts. “When I got that first message on Instagram, I showed my wife, and we were in disbelief,” he says. “I was absolutely ecstatic not only that they reached out to me for the job, but they actually hired me!”

Sterling spent just three to seven minutes photographing each player across a four-hour period at the Huntington Convention Center of Cleveland, and had barely 30 minutes between each team’s time slot to import images, use his custom edit profile in Imagen AI to apply and straighten the photos, and upload them to ESPN. “I had over 700 images edited and delivered within an hour of taking them. Talk about a tight deadline! … I typically edit all my images by hand,” Sterling recalls, “taking about 10 to 15 minutes per image. But for this I needed to get the images back a lot faster than it would have taken me to edit them.”

For the sessions, he used two Westcott backdrops for the main setup, overlapping the backdrops, which extended down and out, to create an expansive, seamless, all-black look. He used two ADJ VF1300 fog machines with Froggy’s Fog fast-dissipating fluid, he explains. “I needed to use fluid that would produce a nice thick fog but would dissipate quickly and not linger.” He used Rosco gels to match up with each teams’ colors. “This is the look requested by ESPN.”

The lighting involved three to four Westcott FJ400s, two rim lights that were 70-degree reflectors, and two 53-inch umbrellas (one key light and one fill). “I turned lights on and off with the Westcott trigger to create different looks quickly,” he says.

“The entire experience was amazing,” Sterling recalls, “A lot of work, but amazing. I enjoyed getting to meet and photograph the players and coaches. The entire ESPN team was such a joy to work with, and I hope to work with them again in the future.” 

Amanda Arnold is a senior editor.