Now that Arnold Schwarzenegger is done with his responsibilities as Governor of California, he had more time to spend at the sporting event that bears his name – the Arnold Sports Festival – which includes the Arnold Classic, among many, many other competitions. The event is actually larger than the Olympics, even, and seems to keep growing. Typically I’m hired to shoot the women but the lead image I just had to take when I saw the dejected bodybuilder sitting on the floor.
Most of the shoots I did were with folks competing at the event, but I’m also asked to identify up-and-coming competitors or those who have a good look. One of my favorites that weekend was Heather Payne (below) who is training to compete in the NPC in the new women’s physique division.
The Expo itself is the craziest portion of the event and it gets ridiculously crowded to the point where you can almost not even make your way around. Luckily as media, we can enter early and I ran into my friend Melissa DiBernardo on the empty expo floor before the deluge of people were let in (below):
And of course it was the worst when Arnold made his way through the crowd with his security entourage. He went to shake my hand, but since I had a camera in it, I did the next best thing:
