McMillan Pazden Smith has been struggling to get good environmental headshots of their team in Charleston. They’ve gone through two rounds with other photographers and just haven’t been happy with them.
Part of the reason is because they want a clean, bright, environmental style that reflects the “look” of their Charlotte office. While the Charlotte office has lots of bright colors, glass, and more modern architecture…the Charleston office is in an old historic building with lots of red brick and dark wood. But I made a site-visit to discuss their goals. And I accepted the challenge!
Arriving on location the day of the shoot, I re-arranged the lobby area to gain access to an acute angle that would give me the background I wanted. I overexposed the window a little bit to give the images a high-key style. I lit the inside walls of the conference room with two Flashpoint speedlights bouncing off the ceiling. I placed a white orchid from the lobby area into the corner for a bit of texture. I positioned the team members outside the conference room to catch a bit of the glass, and to separate them from the background. The portraits were lit with 4 more Flashpoint speedlights, using two Westcott shoot-through umbrellas. Everything was photographed with a Nikon D5 and a Nikkor 70-200 f2.8 set to ISO 400, f4, and 1/250 sec. I shot tethered to a Lenovo Yoga laptop so individuals could instantly look through their photos, make sure they were happy with their shots, and pick out their favorites right there on the spot.
We had a fantastic morning and everyone was super happy with how it all turned out! Many thanks to Kathryn and Carol for all their hard work setting this up and working with everyone’s schedules.
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