Commercial Photography Assignment
This was a tough but satisfying commercial photography assignment because I got to use all my production and many of my photography skills.
The assignment was for Ventura Foods, Inc., which originally was going to be a commercial photography food shoot with chefs, then evolved into a chef shoot along with an industrial photography shoot, and then evolved into a chef, industrial, and business lifestyle assignment during one of our first production meetings.
The client liked that they did not have to hire three photographers. “Oh, I see you also shoot business lifestyle and industrial work as well. Would you be interested in shooting something like what is on your website for us?”
Much of my commercial photography work is B2B, so often I am dealing with folks who have not hired a photographer before; not so in this case. Ventura was working with a very smart consultant who knew her stuff, so we could speak the same language, and our expectations were aligned.
She needed to come up with content that represented the company's core message; that they are a food company and that there is care taken in creating the food they make.
I got that in my first conversation with them and figured that this would be an available light assignment with lots of LED fill and color balancing involved. This was confirmed on the scout.
We ended up filtering and dimming the mixed-color overhead lights with gels and then filling and highlighting them with LED lights balanced to the ambient overhead lighting. Filtering the background light was done in the post because it was going to be more difficult to ditch the blue shift in the windows than to filter the whole window. The total time to shoot the first day's work was 14.5 hours.
The crew consisted of two assistants, a digital tech, an intern, a hair and makeup artist, a stylist, and two models. Additionally, there was a technical scout with my first assistant and some post-production; all done in-house.
As we were shooting, the consultant liked the shallow depth of field in my pictures, as well as the detail shots she had not planned on. So I would say the shoot went as smoothly as could have gone. Although during the shoot there were some technical issues with the laptop which we were able to work through fairly fast.
The second phase of this commercial photography shoot, on the following day, was a business lifestyle shoot for the company's planned recruitment campaign. They wanted a feel for the company culture and environment; something I do a lot of.
The above and below images are composites since the ideal traffic flow at both locations would have happened earlier in the day. The post-production allowed me to show the flow of employees that is often present in the building.
Much of the business lifestyle photography I shoot is not choreographed; because it would be impossibly disruptive or look too artificial if I tried to fake it with non-professional models. That said, when appropriate, I have no problem choreographing an image to represent a scene that might normally happen.
I figure my clients don't pay me to wait around for the perfect moment. My experience and judgment come from many years of shooting annual reports and corporate sustainability reports.
Additionally, the client wanted to show their people in their environment so we just asked people we came across for a few minutes to make their portrait. Everything else was pretty much what was happening in real time. Although the client did not ask for environmental portraits, it seemed that portraits should have been part of the whole package.
Below are three portraits we made of employees. We had to be extremely mobile because there was a lot of ground to cover, so setting up strobe lights was not an option. All of our environmental portraits were lit with small LED Lights or reflected speed lights which kept the look very natural.
The final day of shooting was at Ventura Foods processing facilities which was an industrial setting with a laboratory attached. Our lighting approach was similar in both environments and it made us much more productive because we could continue to move between sets at a good pace.
My style was pretty photojournalistic but with some subtle lighting and a lot of color metering to match the changing ambient lighting.
This commercial photography assignment was one of my favorite shoots of the year because of the variety of work I got to do and the disparate challenges involved. I was working on all four cylinders and I was happy with the images.