Officeworks Staff Portrait & In Store Images

I was commissioned to shoot a staff portrait of the manager of Officeworks and some images of a child showcasing the new kid-sized office cart. I really like this kind of work because for a start its about people and portraits, besides there are always challenges, with time,space ,equipment and at times personalities.The Melbourne head office the style sheet and other image instructions.
I was to met Robert,the manage and set up a studio somewhere in store where I was to make several images of Robert on a pure white background. Well I finally set up the backdrop clamped to the shelves near the loading dock.

I'm using 2 mono bloc 500w with barn doors to control the spill and bounce and for the Main light the 500w strobe is firing through a medium soft box with a silver reflector as fill on the right side.Its really important to have the right gear on board as you never know what you will encounter at the venue.SAFETY SAFETY SAFETY you must have Public Liability insurance ( $10,000.000 is minimum) sand bag the light stands,rope of the area,tape down the leads if there is the chance of a trip and observe all the clients safety instructions IE fluro vests,footwear etc.

As usual a brand new power board I plugged in didn't work,so I had to source another from way up the front of the store...BACK UPS BACK UPS BACK UPS....really the name of the game

So I set up the studio and to get the exposure right I need the background strobes to read between 1.3-1.7 stops brighter than the main light on the subjects so that the white is blown out .The subject needs to be far enough away from the background so the we don't get flare and lose edge definition.

The way I do this is to make sure that the reading on the front of subjects facing the lens ( in this case F8) is about the same as the reading on the back of the head pointing towards the the background.Get it? If I have F8 at the front and he is too close to the background and I get a reading of f11 or f16 the edge of his face and hair are GONE !! If that happens the graphic artist will tell the boss NEVER hire you again.As you can see from the shot of my hand holding all the the right cards( graphic artists LOVE me) there is a clean edge on my hand and the colours are all defined...in spite of the very low res off the web.

You can use the histogram on the camera to balance strobes but that is slow I use a light meter. Remember don't rely on the image in the screen of the digital SLR, the manufacturers are know the "trick" up that image so all your shots look good.Always use the histogram.Digital images do not like to be overexposed so keep an eye on the right end of the scale.

If you shoot your hand like this BEFORE the talent arrives you have a pretty good chance that your exposures will be close.As it was I needed to adjust the height of the Key (main) strobe as Robert was taller than Id judged.Get the set up finished asap then the most important thing is APPROPRIATE dialogue to have your subject be at ease.Many people are shy and in the corporate world its not been their choice to have the portrait made.

Where is the child for the photograph in store?

Oh, we don't have one....we didn't get the releases in time.

Rather than letting this shoot go,I decided to find my own talent within the the shopping centre.

Which I did ...I found this perfect little boy whose dad was pleased to be part of it.I'm very experienced shooting kids, so engaging him was a snap.

I was able to send these images away to the delight of head office because they were not expecting to have the images of the child and the shopping cart. I got a signed release from the dad and gave office works permission to use his image.

Going that extra mile for the client really pays off, the PR company that rang me in the first place was real grateful that I gave them all the images they need within 24 hours..

These images were exactly what the client wanted ,I followed their style sheet to the letter.If you want to be a FULL TIME professional photographer you need to be able to produce the results and re-produce the results....

By the way I always shoot RAW files....