Parkour philosophy and the power of an orange jacket

George Mayfield is a parkour athlete and one of the things I wanted to get across in this shoot is the parkour philosophy of reclaiming the urban environment from its intended use and finding personal, creative ways to move through it. Even the most cheerless urban landscape can become a natural, fluid space for exploration and an expression of creativity and joy.

Our shoot day was greay and damp, and the environment was certainly doing a good job of looking cheerless and bleak. I used lighting to lift George himself and highlight him against the background, and his bright orange jacket also did a great job of contrasting with the dull grey surroundings and making him pop against it, especially when in post production I made the images much cooler and bluer, giving all that grey concrete a blue hue. The orange contrasting against the blue is a great colour combo and made a virtue of the monochromatic backdrop.

We then moved down into the underpass and I pushed this further with gelled flash, lighting the underpass with blue light so that George really stood out (and all the nice details of the architecture didn't just disappear into darkness).

I've said before that I love shooting against Brutalist architecture, and these images use the structure, shapes and textures of the environment showcases George's understanding of the Parkour philosophy of learning to view the world as a series of opportunities for movement rather than a fixed, rigid environment.