In the courtyard of the Vatican is a museum of statues. One of the statues is Sfera con Sfera (Sphere within a Sphere) by the Italian sculptor Arnaldo Pomodoro. When we were there I made a few images of it and filed it away as a possible image to use later on.
I’ve done some work with a local school shooting a lot of sports and sometimes their parents would ask about my doing some portrait work. I knew this girl from shooting soccer games. She was a talented athlete whose parents were proud of her sports abilities. I asked them to bring her soccer uniform and a ball. After the usual portraits I asked her to pose holding the ball with attitude.
I meshed together the two images then used Calvin Hollywood’s Freaky Amazing Detail method to make it into what I had imagined.
BTW – whenever a friend asks me what camera they should buy I tell them either Nikon or Canon. Both are great but what separates them from the rest of the pack is if you’re in Rome on Monday where you drop your 24-70 f/2.8 and you’ll be in Florence the next day, it’s a pretty good bet that you’ll be able to walk into a good photography shop and get a replacement Nikon or Canon lens. Never mind how I know that.
