You’ve probably been told to go shoot your athletic facilities and immediately realized the problem: the lighting is trash, the rooms feel like caves, and every angle makes the space look smaller than it is. In this video I walk you through exactly how I photograph D1 locker rooms start to finish as the Creative Director for Colorado State Athletics. I’m re-shooting our men’s basketball facilities top to bottom, and I break down the gear I trust (yes, bring a tripod), how I choose lighting “vibes,” how I keep the space clean, and how I find compositions that actually make tight rooms feel premium. The biggest takeaway is my bracketing workflow for ugly mixed lighting. I shoot wide (around 16–25mm) so it feels spacious without turning into a fisheye fever dream, then I run continuous bracketing with a 1-stop EV shift and fire off five exposures. Later in Lightroom Classic, I select the set, Photo > Photo Merge > HDR, and use my same settings every time to blend into one clean file with way more dynamic range. From there it’s small base edits, and when needed I’ll use masks (like warming up the court to bring back that natural wood feel) so the final images look polished for websites, recruiting packets, and anything else the program needs.