form fitness

I walked into the Form Fitness shoot during a heavy editorial season. I already had a handful of health and wellness assignments on the calendar, and I was genuinely worried they would all start looking the same. As a commercial photographer in Portsmouth, NH, my biggest fear is becoming a "template" shooter. I really pushed this session to find the unexpected and move away from the "bright and white" gym tropes.

The front of the house at Form is exactly what you'd expect from a premier boutique space: light, airy, and impeccably designed. It’s a dream for architectural photography portfolio shots, with clean lines and massive windows. But the real highlight of the day was a space I actually resisted shooting at first: the back weightlifting room.

It was dark, industrial, and completely contradicted the "zen" vibe of the entryway. My initial instinct was to stay in the light, but once we stepped into that back room, the narrative shifted. The grit of the heavy iron and the moody, low-key lighting provided a necessary counter-measure to the polished front of the studio. It added a layer of depth and reality to the fitness photography in NH that made the whole magazine feature pop.

Shooting these seacoast business portraits in such a high-contrast environment allowed us to tell a more complete story of the brand. A "fitness home" isn't just about the aesthetics of the lobby; it’s about the hard work that happens in the shadows. Balancing those two worlds is what makes narrative architectural photography so rewarding—it's about finding the beauty in the contradiction of a space.