When Kerry Gillespie and I began to cover the Canadian sprinters based out of York University in Toronto, I started brainstorming ideas for portraits or, as we call them in the business, sportraits.

When a one-week window opened up to visit them at their training camp in St. Kitts and stay at the same hotel, I decided that it was time to dust off an idea I had been thinking about.

I researched the hotel we were staying at, to get a view of the pool area, by looking at the hotel’s website and at the athletes’ Instagram feeds.

I wanted to create a portrait series that was going to be fun to shoot and link athletes from different sports together with a common theme.

The concept required a swimming pool with a large deck and loads of room, so that nothing in the background would be lit up in the flash fall-off in the background.

When I packed for the trip I brought a pair of flashes. The new Canon 600EX-RTs were perfect; before these strobes came out I would light everything with Canon flashes but use Pocket Wizards (a radio remote) to trigger them. These new strobes also have a radio remote capability but with one huge difference: You can control the setting on the remote flashes from a unit that triggers them that sits in the camera’s hot shoe. That means I can adjust the output of each flash without having to run over to them.

I needed a couple of things to work out for these portraits to happen.

First, I needed buy-in from the athletes.

Furthermore, I needed two people for each shoot, one to pose and the other to throw water.

Over the first couple of days I spoke to some athletes about meeting by the pool for the shoot.

Thankfully Khamica Bingham and Shai-Anne Davis agreed.

Armed with their photos the next day, I was able to show the other sprinters what we had in mind, during breaks at the track.