Sometimes, the job is simple. Just go out and make a picture. The key phrase there is “make a picture”. Anyone can press a button and take a picture, but it’s making a picture happen that makes this job worth getting up in the mornings for.

And believe me, I got up early for this one. For a wedding, I’m often showing up 11AM, 1PM, nice and easy. When you’re meeting the techs who go out for one of Manhattan’s leading pest control companies, you get there when they do: 7AM. In the pouring rain. One thing’s for certain, we’re not taking any outdoor photos today.

In this case, I’m taking staff photos for a relaunch of a corporate website, including new domain names and all. Now there’s one thing M&M Environmental is known for, and it’s eradicating bedbugs. (Don’t worry, I promise no images of bugs on my blog. Honest.) And the star of M&M’s team is Champ. Say hello to Champ…

Champ has no concept of personal space.

That might be because Champ is a year and a half old Beagle/Pointer mix, and he’s got more certifications and degrees than you can shake a stick at, if that’s your idea of a good time. Champ’s idea of a good time is sniffing whatever he can, and when he smells bedbugs, up comes his right forepaw. I got to watch Champ training, and he is goooood at what he does. Champ’s best buddy and partner is Danny, and that dog loves loves loves Danny.

One of the things I had to show was that M&M has complete testing as part of their service, but there wasn’t a lot of equipment around that day towards that. They did have kind of telescope/magnifying glass thing around, but it wasn’t the most impressive thing you’ve ever seen. We used just the top half, and implied the rest.

Finally, I had to get a portrait of Tim, the technical director for the firm. One thing about executives– they don’t generally give you much time. And I didn’t ask much of Tim’s time. I led him up to one the meeting spaces, set up one small soft box. Tim made it easy, he just exudes confidence and comfort with what he’s all about, and it took literally 3 frames to get his portrait done. Two verticals which fit newsletters and blog postings well, and then this one, which is the type of thing you can use for a main shot for a feature article on a business profile.

I gave them tons of stock images they can use of their staff from techs to call center to their four footed superstar. They were thrilled, and Champ was too.

One of my recent gigs was covering the launch weekend of a new church in the Providence, Rhode Island area.

I had been contacted by Dan Clymer of Restoration House Ministries, a church planting organization that launches new churches throughout New England.  During my one year at Lincoln Christian College, Dan was one of my very best professors, and I’ve always held it as one of the great privileges in my life that I was able to listen to Dan explore the life of Christ for four hours a week every week for an entire semester.  When he asked me about covering the opening weekend, I was thrilled to be able to commit to it.

Northpointe Christian Church meets at Cinemaworld in Lincoln, Rhode Island.  Yeah, the church meets in a movie theater.  It takes a little getting used to, but the location is ideal– you have a room with clear sightlines, an area for using as a stage in front, a second theater is used for one part of the kids programs, the kids’ party room is used for one class space, and their offices in the mall, just outside the theater entrance, encompass the infant/toddler area.

I covered a launch party the night before the first service at the theater, as well as the first day’s program.   I ended up delivering about twice the amount of images in the slideshow, with an eye towards showing them in action, while getting them group and family unit portraits that could be used for newsletters, fundraising brochures, etc.  I’m told that Restoration House is using the images to put together a 10 minute video that explains their role in bringing a project like this to fruition.

In a lot of ways, my photojournalistic style that I use for weddings was a perfect fit for giving them an inside view of the day, without interfering with the experience for newcomers.

When I started off in sports photography, at the end of a basketball season, or after a number of days shooting at the racetrack, all the photos began to look the same to me.  As a result, I’ve always tried to keep doing things outside of my usual boxes in order to stay fresh, and to hone some of the skills that I’m trying to develop that I can apply to my main business areas.

Today was one of those opportunities.  A longtime friend called me up yesterday, saying that someone in marketing at her firm in Manhattan asked her if she knew a photographer for a last minute assignment, and, since I’d done a session with her child a few months back…

The assignment was pretty straightforward.  Make a few images of some key people on the trading floor in some work related situations for a brochure the firm was putting out.  The images had to be done quickly, since deadline was the following day, so images would have to be turned around before I left the site, and emailed to marketing, which was in Memphis– meaning that I’d be working without the direction of an art department or anything of the sort.

I was introduced to the four principal subjects, and quickly realized that they regarded this photo shoot as slightly more painful than the average root canal.  I was given some basic ideas about where on the trading floor I could shoot, and a vague idea what they were hoping I might convey.

One of the locations I was given was a desk that was vacant for the day that was in the middle of the floor, meaning I could incorporate a lot of the action around me into the photos.  More importantly, it gave me an opportunity I always seize:  give everyone a chance to start off with something successful.  I set up a studio light right near the desk, and kept a couple of items I thought I might need nearby.  After one or two frames with Carlos, we added a reflector to fill out his face, and the result was a confidence booster for him when he saw the image on the back of the camera.

They asked me to show some collaboration type scenes, and I tried to get input from Carlos and Helena as to what felt genuine rather than staged, and they brought out some documents that they could use as props.

With Bobby, I wanted to give a more relaxed feel to his portrait.  So I let him turn his back to the desk, which I’ve always found gives a confident look to guys.

As we sent some of the initial take back to Memphis, they asked for some specific shots, including one vertical shot with Miyuki, Helena and Carlos, that had to have a video screen in the background.  I went back to that empty desk, and used the same setup from the earlier shot– one light and a reflector is simple, yet does a great job of separating them from the clutter.  I kept encouraging them to get close, not only to keep them in the frame, but to encourage interaction, which gives the photo a little more life.

We ended up swapping the three of them through each spot to give the marketing folks some different psychological feels, but that was essentially it.  Everything was one light, simple, non-intrusive, and kept the distractions for the people working around them to a minimum.

It was a little different to do a job like this without as much direction as I usually get for this type of assignment.  But the people who I was working with, both onsite and in the home office, were flexible and were willing to try things, which makes it fun to do something out of the usual routine.