A couple of weeks ago I posted about another corporate portrait gig I shot here in Atlanta. Well, here are the results from the effort. Turns out the images were actually printed as posters rather than the life size cutouts that I had previously understood them to be used for. Here’s what they look like as a final piece in print:

And here they are, full frame, as I delivered them:

The creative direction I was given was to photograph each of the girls in front of a white background, vertical format, in a candid type manor to capture some of their personality, with them holding the printed piece that represented the “belief” that they exude in their day-to-day workings with the company. The background needed to be as white as possible and the printed piece needed to be easily seen and in focus, along with each girl holding them. I also was instructed to leave white negative space around them to allow for cropping.

This was pretty easy to accomplish. They are both lit with a large softbox at camera left, and are standing directly in front of a strobe on a floor stand lighting the white wall behind them. The camera was on a tripod and tethered to my laptop at f8. Each of the girls were in front of my camera for maybe five minutes. Aside from having to set up the lighting in a cramped conference room, it wasn’t a tough shot to do as far as creative direction goes. Setting up for a true white background without having adequate distance to separate the subject from the background can present issues, though. Having adequate time to work with is also an issue. Both of the employees arrived after I arrived that morning, and both had to leave pretty quickly after having arrived. I also only had the conference room I was shooting in for a limited period of time. So, I made it happen. I had to.

The company was under the impression that the shoot would only take me 3o minutes, though. Well, as I already mentioned, the actual shooting part took even less than that. But, they were not taking into account the time it took to gain a clear understanding of their needs via the phone, write the quote for the job, load my gear to shoot the job, get my gear in the Atlanta high-rise building their office was located in, set up, break down, reload the gear, unload it once back to my place, quickly edit the shots and post them to a web photo gallery, do final processing on the two selected files, deliver those two files, and, finally, invoice them for the work done.

I only share these details because I sometimes find client’s perceptions of how long a shoot will take laughable. That’s okay, because it’s not their job to know what all is involved with various shoots, no matter how simple they may be in concept. Simple isn’t always easy.

This was a fun job to shoot, though. The girls were pretty easy to put at ease once I had them in front of the camera. I encouraged them both to have fun with it – and they did – as did I.