The FIFA Womens World Cup has taken over Australia in the last couple of weeks and it got me thinking of a shoot i’d been wanting to do for a while and just hadn’t got around to it.
I put a call out on Facebook looking for a girl who loved football and Gracie’s mum sent me this message.
“A local bayside girl who started at Sandringham Soccer club and is now playing for NPLW South Melbourne U19’s, Melbourne Victory and City A-League elite programs and has just made the U18’s Victorian State team (2nd year in a row) travelling to Canberra for the nationals from 5-10th September.”
I could tell this was a pretty proud Mum and a pretty talented young football player, so a couple of nights later, at Sandringham Beach, we set up this little sunset session.
Typically I’m a natural light portrait photographer but this time I wanted to do something a little more dramatic to show the determination that Gracie has for the round ball game, so I used my Godox lights to balance with the amazing sunset to create some more unique portraits.
Gracie did great, playing football at the beach is not her normal kind of play, but seeing as she started her football journey at Sandringham Football Club, it just worked.
You can follow Gracie’s football endeavours over at her Instagram. I know I’m going to be following!