I had a fun time recently photographing John Brenkus, host of the ESPN show Sport Science, on set on a cover shoot for Sports Insight magazine. The art direction was to work with the concept of Brenkus as a sort of mad scientist, but to avoid making it look like he was standing on the set of his show. This is because beyond hosting the Emmy Award-winning show he is also a successful entrepreneur and author, as well as an accomplished athlete, having completed several Iron Man competitions, one of which he featured on the show, analyzing what his body went through getting in shape to compete on that level. I needed to provide both a cover photo and inside photo for the story and was provided only a boxful of beakers to create the look. In the brief 45 minutes I had with him we shot three setups – on white backdrop, using the beakers filled with colored water against a cavernous black space and against a wall – the latter two shots using underlighting to accentuate the mad scientist look. All two and three light setups. The white backdrop was originally supposed to be the cover with the plan that it would be overlaid with scientific jargon, but they ended up going with the beaker shot. Overall it was a good shoot and I enjoyed getting a behind the scenes look at the set. The show strikes a great balance between being educational and entertaining. If you ever get a chance to watch I’d recommend it.