A recent magazine portrait photography cover shoot in Miami with the Miami Heat’s James Jones ( now interim general manager for the Phoenix Suns)  didn’t go as planned…But came out red hot instead!

When the magazine Headwise called Miami based photographer Joshua Prezant Photography and said they lined up the Miami Heat’s forward James Jones to be on the cover of their magazine I knew the shoot would have to be quick and squeezed into the very busy schedule of the basketball team.  When the team is in season the players have very little time for anything but basketball.  So having photographed many professional athletes over the years I knew things have to be ready to go and in place well in advance of the actual shoot.

As usual with shoots like this the first step is to start coordinating with the teams PR representative to come up with a date, time, and place for the shoot.  After finding a day that worked for the team and my crew the next step was to scout the location.  The magazine ideally wanted him overlooking the water with something that screamed said Miami. A few days before the shoot we scouted the location at the American Airlines Arena in Downtown Miami.  We would have to shoot at the arena where the team played and practiced because right after practice was the only time James Jones had free.

A perfect spot was picked on an outside balcony and a platform to raise James Jones safely above the rails were ordered up and electrical outlets double checked. And as any good photographer knows, you have to plan for backups just in case of anything. So we scouted some backups and have a plan B and place C ready.

The day of the shoot my team and I arrived three hours ahead of the shoot time given to us by the team to get set up and ready to go.  As these things generally go, the shoot time kept being pushed further and further back because team practice was going longer than expected ( and no, you can’t just have the PR guy tell the coach we need one of his players now!) And sure enough with this being in South Florida and all right as the player arrived for the shoot fresh out of the shower a sudden heavy rain band went right over our outside set up.  We had no time to wait out the rain as the player had to get his kids in 10 minutes.  We thought we had 20 minutes with him!

But we were prepared for anything and my team and I kicked into gear and got everything ready to go inside and made some great shots.

It was not what we all were expecting, but the client loved the pictures and so did the subject.