Austin-based photographer Jay B. Sauceda sat down with ILTP to talk about his recent campaign with Dick’s Sporting Goods.

Can you tell us a little bit about how this assignment came about?
Pentagram Austin’s Stu Taylor and DJ Stout were working with Dick’s Sporting Goods on their Spring catalog. They wanted to include some interesting portraits of runners wearing the gear along with the other lifestyle shots that were already going to be in there. They then reached out to me about shooting it for them.

What was the process like of meshing your vision with Pentagram’s and Dick’s Sporting Goods? Was there a lot of back and forth?
They had a basic treatment that they had developed. The day before the shoot we did some light tests and went back and forth with Stu and DJ about the look and eventually settled upon this.

Did you shoot tethered with the client present?
I shot tethered with Stu Taylor present. We were shooting this while the lifestyle portion of the job was being shot in downtown Austin, so Barry Barrenson from Dick’s Sporting Goods spent most of his time down there with that production and they left the creative direction for this portion up to me and Stu.

WE WANTED THESE PEOPLE TO BE AS REALISTICALLY WINDED AND SWEATY AS POSSIBLE, BUT THESE FOLKS ARE ALL LONG DISTANCE RUNNERS

It seems like there are always unique challenges on shoots – did any come up with this assignment?
We wanted these people to be as realistically winded and sweaty as possible, but these folks are all long distance runners. It was kind of difficult to get them warmed up so I basically had them run to my studio from the shoot downtown and then spend about 30 minutes doing sprints right outside the door. When their time was up I had them jump right in front of the camera and knocked out the shots.