Being a versatile corporate portrait photographer for art directors on a deadline

Being Versatile: part 2

versatile – ver·sa·tile, adjective
from Webster’s dictionary:

3: capable of turning forward or backward, reversible, capable of moving laterally and up and down

4: having many uses or applications

26 year old Kevin Pomplun, CEO of SkyGrid. © Jay Watson Photography

Last week I shot a corporate portrait for a New York financial magazine. These are the type of assignments some call “bread and butter” gigs. This is not the type of work I seek out, but something I have to be good at or else I would be turning down a large amount of work. Sometimes these are word of mouth assignments. If I do a good job, the art director will most likely spread the word. These deadlines are VERY tight and art directors need someone dependable.

This shoot was on Wed at 12 noon. Early edits were uploaded Thursday morning 10 am, selects were made by the art director 40 minutes later, and final images were transmitted on Thursday 2 pm (4:00 NY time). If you can work quickly and apply some creativity to these situations, you can find yourself to be “the go to guy” for a few different art directors

Is it stressful? Yes and No. Yes the deadline is tight so you can not screw it up and you can not have any part of your workflow or equipment fail. If you do a good job you have accomplished something that deserves merit. Often CEOs only have a few minutes in their schedule for a photo shoot. Most CEOs I have shot in California are friendly, but the old school east coast business types hate being photographed. The stressful part of these assignments is not the deadline. For me the stress is in applying creativity to a typical corporate office where I have no control over the environment. I have to take what I am given. Art direction occurs through email and phone calls ahead of time. The art director is never present on these shoots so you have to be prepared to shoot a few different options for their layout.

All I have to do is bring the right gear, an artistic vision, stay loose, stay ready, and shoot, shoot, shoot. Quickly!

Tags: Bay Area, corporate, creativity, deadline, editorial, magazine, New York, photography, portrait

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 29th, 2008 at 8:01 pm and is filed under About the shoot, Portraits. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.