Many people underestimate the impact of lighting and posing on how their body appears in photographs. The difference between a fitness photoshoot and a poorly lit gym selfie can be monumental. Proper lighting is essential for accurately assessing and showcasing the details of one’s physique. As the famous artist Rembrandt once said, “a painting is complete when it has the shadows of a god.”
Rembrandt’s words still hold true today: a poorly lit gym selfie with bad posing can make it difficult to fully appreciate your progress and identify areas for improvement. While measuring your fitness progress by achieving training goals is important, the most effective way to visually document your journey is through professional fitness photography.
By capturing your body’s progress at regular intervals under optimal lighting and expert guidance, you can appreciate your gains through high-quality portraiture. However, achieving exceptional fitness photos involves more than just following a good diet and hitting the gym. It requires careful planning and preparation. In this post, we will cover essential tips to help you get the best fitness photos possible from your session.
In this post we’ll cover:
- Who can benefit from a fitness photoshoot
- How to choose a photographer to capture your fitness photos
- How to prepare your appearance for your fitness photo shoot
- How to train for a fitness photoshoot
- Where to take your fitness photos
- What you should bring to your fitness session
- What you should wear to your fitness photoshoot
- What fitness models eat before a photoshoot
Who Can Benefit from a Fitness Photoshoot?
Fitness photoshoots offer a range of benefits to various individuals, including fitness instructors, professional fitness models, and anyone dedicated to their physical development. Here are some examples of people who can benefit from a fitness shoot:
Personal trainers: Showcasing your own physique in high-quality images serves as an excellent resume for attracting new clients. When people see the results you’ve achieved, they are more likely to trust your expertise and seek a healthier lifestyle under your guidance.
Fitness models and professional athletes: Fitness photos are crucial for self-promotion and career advancement. High-quality images help you stand out in a competitive industry and attract sponsorship or other professional opportunities.
Fitness enthusiasts: Even if you’re not pursuing a career in the fitness industry, having professionally-captured images of your body under optimal lighting conditions can be incredibly rewarding. These photos can help you appreciate your strength gains, identify areas for improvement, and serve as motivation for future fitness goals.
Fitness photography is not limited to any specific group of people. Anyone who consistently exercises for 3 or more hours per week and follows a nutrition plan that supports their training can benefit from a fitness photoshoot. The experience is a great way to celebrate your achievements and document your fitness journey.
How to choose a photographer to capture your fitness photos
Step One: Hire a fitness photographer with knowledge of human anatomy It’s crucial to work with a professional photographer who has a deep understanding of human anatomy and body movement. Those with experience photographing nude subjects are often well-versed in posing and lighting techniques for various body parts.
A solid grasp of muscle groups is essential for directing you towards poses that effectively highlight specific muscles and showcase your best angles.
Step Two: Hire a photographer who is also fitness-oriented A photographer who practices fitness themselves is more likely to understand the nuances of mind-muscle connections, allowing them to better guide you in showcasing your muscle groups at their peak.
For this reason, it’s recommended to hire a fitness photographer who shares your passion for fitness. Choosing a fellow athlete often results in better posing feedback, as they can draw from their own experiences with mind-muscle connections during training.
The photo on the right (below on mobile) is a fitness selfie of yours truly, taken in January 2023.
Fitness Photoshoot Preparation: How to prepare your appearance
In addition to getting your body in condition via training and eating well, It’s also very important to prepare for your fitness photoshoot by scheduling all of your personal care appointments at the proper times leading up to your photo shoot.
To get the best fitness photos possible, you should decide weather or not to do the following leading up to your photo shoot:
- A hair cut/color
- Manicure / Pedicure
- Lash Extensions
- Teeth Whitening
- Shop for Outfits
Remember that there is NOT any one thing you can do make your fitness photos better. Getting high quality photos is about being prepared and doing a bunch of little things leading up to your session. These easy little preparations collectively contribute to better photos.
BODY HAIR
In addition to the above appointments both male and female fitness models generally look better in their final photos without body hair. There’s a good reason for this even if it’s not something you normally do.
Having too much (or any, in some cases) body hair, can hide muscle definition and make you appear less defined. Body hair basically blurs the lines in your body. When you remove the hair it sharpens the cuts in your musculature that you’d never see if you kept everything au natural.
Removing body hair is not mandatory, but having your skin well groomed should be something both men and women consider to exaggerate their physiques.
Grooming tips for men
For men, getting a haircut and trimming your ear hair, nose hair and facial hair can help you look significantly better in your final images. Ask your girlfriend, she’ll tell you I’m right.
A good wax or shave of your body hair is especially important for us guys since we have a lot more body hair that can obscure our muscles and thus hide the cuts in our musculature.
If you’re averse to total removal of your body hair, using electric trimmers at a #1 height will greatly enhance the appearance of your musculature over not grooming anything.
If you experience itchiness, that means your skin is dry. Apply lotion as necessary. Just avoid using lotions or moisturizers right before your photo shoot because they can sometimes cause unwanted shimmery highlights.
If you want to color the hair on your head the best time to do it is about 3 days before your photo shoot so the hair dye has enough time to fade away from your scalp leading up to your photo shoot.
Grooming tips for Women
Women should have their hair cut and or colored 3-5 days before their photo shoot. This will allow time for the hair dyes to fade from the scalp if you choose to have it colored.
As for areas of the body like armpits, legs and the bikini line, It’s best to be clean shaved the night before your photo shoot.
If you prefer waxing, this should be done no less than 3-5 days before your session to allow time for your skin to heal. For more information about best practices for hair removal in your intimate areas, this post will tell you everything you need to know.
If you’re not into body hair removal, that’s totally fine! Just know you will look less defined in any areas you choose not to groom.
To learn more about what you should do with the hair on your head in anticipation for your photo shoot you can check out this post for more info.
How to train for a fitness photoshoot
If you’re just starting your fitness journey and want to use fitness photo sessions as a way to document your progress or appreciate your gains, the following should be strictly followed:
- Practice a healthy living lifestyle consisting of exercise, good nutrition, protecting yourself from the sun, and abstention from drugs, alcohol or other things known to accelerate aging.
- Focus on the number you lift rather than the number on the scale. Almost all fitness models focus on getting stronger with resistance training at least 3 hours a week. The physical results you want will usually happen naturally if you focus on getting stronger rather than loosing mass (dieting).
- Hire a fitness coach to help program workouts specifically for your goals. You can find out what I learned about exercise from photographing people with exceptional bodies in this post.
- Have a nutritionist help you create a meal plan to fuel your body so your efforts exercising aren’t wasted. In short, you are what you eat and it’s impossible out exercise a bad diet!
Getting fitness photoshoot ready: Long term exercises you should devote most of your energy towards
Long term, it’s really important that you stay consistent with strength conditioning to look your best in pictures. That said you should also include some HIIT workouts once or twice a week to build your v02 max. Conditioning in both conventions will contribute to better health and thus a more attractive body.
Strength Training
Strength training is how you develop muscle tone and size. Strength training can either be done using machines, free weights or body weight exercises, TRX, Pilates, CrossFit, etc.
Heavier weight lifted one rep shy of fialure in the 1-5 rep range will build a strong Herculean Greek god looking physique. Maximum muscle hypertrophy happens when you lift 1 rep shy of failure in the 8-12 rep range. Lighter weight lifted to failure in the 12-20 rep range will build leaner, more striated (defined) muscle.
Everyone interested fitness photography should include the following 6 movements as the core of their exercise program.
- Overhead press
- Pull Up /Chin Up
- Bench Press
- Row
- Squats
- Dead lift
These 6 movements will work every muscle in the body. From these core movements, you can then further enhance areas of your body with additional angles and isolation exercises as needed. For further reading, Jailhouse Strong is a good place to start for dudes, and Glute Lab is great for the ladies that want to emphasize lower body hypertrophy.
HIIT Cardio Workouts
HIIT workouts are intense cardio sessions that burn more fat than traditional steady state cardio like jogging or walking. HIIT workouts are different from traditional cardio in that they are meant to be done at near maximum capacity for short periods of time with short rests in between sets.
Most experts recommend about a minute of maximum effort followed by 30 seconds of rest in a cycled fashion.
You can do this at a local track by sprinting the straights and walking the curves. You can also do Juarez Valley pushups pretty much anywhere.
Examples of things you can do for HIIT exercises:
- Jumping jacks
- Jump rope
- Mountain Climbers
- Sprints
- Jump lunges
- Jump squats
- Box jumps
- Spin classes
- Rowing
- Hiking Uphill
What do fitness models eat before a photoshoot?
Professional bodybuilders, fitness models and cover models are specialists in body transformation. They are quite adept at controlling their physique both in the short and long term.
In the simplest terms, to build your body you’ll need a diet plan tailored to your body and your goals. Macro calculators are very helpful here if you need some direction on where to start. The main idea is that there are 3 macro nutrients you should focus on while building your body.
- Proteins
- Carbs
- Fats
While building your body, it’s important to follow a nutrition plan based on these macro nutrients and your goals. These values will change depending on wheather you’re trying to gain weight in a surplus or cut with a caloric deficit. The part that doesn’t change is your protein intake, which should be kept within range to consistently build your lean mass while training.
Cutting water weight and body fat for your photo shoot
If you want to shed your water layer and or lean down to make your muscles pop in the weeks leading up to your photo shoot, this is the Cliff’s Notes for the pre-contestant physique competitor’s diet.
To be clear, this is not a lifestyle diet; it’s a guide for body builders about to step on stage, using pre-contest strategies from the world’s top bikini, fitness model and figure competitors.
It’s very hard on your body and I’m not personally a fan of it, but this is the basic blueprint if you want to get extra lean and veiney for your photo shoot.
The secret is to get a good pump right before you’re photographed
Even though eating healthily and working out can help you get to the body that looks amazing in photos, It’s also important to know how to show off that great body immediately before the shoot begins!
Pumping up your muscles will have a striking effect on your final photos. The following are some strategies to pump up for the camera before your fitness photoshoot.
1: Do your photo shoot at the gym
If you’ve got the okay to do a photo shoot in your gym, you can use the equipment there to pump up before your shoot. The great thing about doing this is that you can get environmental shots while you pump up your muscles and do studio photos after you pump up.
2: Pump up with body weight and explosive movements
If you don’t have access to weights or a gym at your location, you can do body weight exercises (like jump squats, push ups etc.) to stimulate your muscles for any area you want to feature. These types of movements are effective and can literally be done anywhere.
3: Don’t Overdo it!
However you choose to pump up, It’s important to keep the weights light and conserve your energy for posing. Posing is harder work than most people think it will be if you haven’t done much of it before.
Pumping up is the secret actors use right before they do a shirtless scene in your favorite action movie. You’ll notice huge changes in your physique just by including this simple step immediately before your photos are captured.
Where Should I Take My Fitness photos?
All of my fitness photoshoots happen on location. That said, there are two different styles I can create depending on the photography style you want, and what you have access to.
Environmental portraits are usually captured where you train. Studio portraits can sometimes be captured where you train and sometimes at clients homes. You can learn more about on location studio portraits here.
Environmental Fitness Photography
Environmental fitness photography is basically portraits that are created wherever your sport or exercise happens. An obvious example of this would be a personal trainer that coaches people for strength out of a gym. In this case an environmental portrait would be something like you curling a dumb bell in the gym.
By including the environment or the accessories of your sport, these portraits draw attention away from you and put more of the focus on the activity.
These portraits work really well to get people excited about your sport and helps them visualize themselves taking part in it.
Studio Fitness Photography
The other option is studio style portraits or full sun portraits. These portraits isolate you on a black or white backdrop and really hone in on the details of your body by excluding the background.
This approach is best to evaluate your progress visually and generally allows finer control over the light. This is important since lighting is the main mechanism for highlighting your muscle groups.
These portraits are the best for evaluating your progress visually, or showing the viewer how their body could be transformed if they participated in your sport.
What Should I Bring to A Fitness Photoshoot?
It’s a good idea to bring the things you need to do your exercises. Bring your actual fitness equipment (weights, jump ropes, medicine balls, running shoes) if you can. These items can be used during your fitness photoshoot to give your photos context.
If you’re doing your session on location at your gym, or other place where all your workout accessories are, you’ll likely only need to bring yourself.
What do you wear to a fitness photo shoot?
You should bring whatever you normally wear to work out or compete in.
It’s a good idea to wear more revealing outfits for at least a few shots so you can document your progress. That said, promotional images should try to reveal less skin, to create more conservative images for a wider audience.
Appealing to a wider audience can be useful if you plan to use the images in any online advertising like Facebook Ads.
Overly revealing images may get flagged by the artificial intelligence of online advertising platforms for showing too much skin. It’s dumb and I hate it, but it’s something you should think about when capturing images to promote yourself.
Fitness Photographer San Francisco Bay Area
If you found this post helpful and are looking for a fitness photographer in the northern San Francisco Bay Area, you can reach out here after reviewing my price menu and I’d be happy to set up a time to discuss your intended session with you!
If you’re not quite ready for a fitness photoshoot but would still like to get occasional updates from me, you can subscribe to email updates here.
Comment below if you think I missed something. My goal is to make this post as helpful as possible for anyone looking to document their fitness journey or promote themselves!
