So we know that this might sound crazy, but what if we told you that we don't just photograph weddings...? While wedding photography does make up the majority of our photographic work and is our main focus, we also do the occasional commercial shoot for corporations and other businesses. We've worked with a plethora of businesses over the past nine years, but mainly now focus on corporations and those who pay professional rates i.e. are familiar with professional photography day rate pricing and the professional licensing of images. We're no strangers to the high level professional methods of commercial photography with Jenny having worked for the studio of the world's largest online retailer in the world in L.A. as a contractor doing product photography and with Jason's advertising experience and commercial photographic training and degrees. It only makes sense that we return to our roots for projects such as this.
This series of images in particular comes from a recent shoot that we did creating some internal promotional images for 1st Source Bank. 1st Source Bank is based locally in Michiana and stands as one of the original financial institutions of the South Bend region. Clean, clear, and traditionally professional is what the bank was looking for in these images so we kept things bright and basic in the lighting with the studio lights we chose to bring with us.
The biggest challenge in lighting a location such as this came from the background of the images. The art director recommended that we photograph the trio of CEO Christopher Murphy, Bank President James Seitz, and CFO Andrea Short in front of a stainless steel wall emblazoned with a stainless steel logo of the bank. Stainless steel likes to work like a mirror and reflect every light within sight, so making sure to angle and flag the lights properly was very important. We managed to eliminate most of the reflections on the main scene where our trio of talent was going to be,while still managing to light them properly. (Unfortunately with the location being a working bank we couldn't eliminate all existing lighting and the reflection of some existing fixtures showed up on the background). Having gone to The Brooks Institute, this scenario immediately brought back visions of the infamous "Black Glass II" assignment.
We did a four light setup here with a key, fill, and two edge lights to help add a little separation and rim light to the subjects. The lighting kept the contrast ratio of the scene rather low and helped to eliminate a certain moodiness or drama that could be achieved by having deeper shadows. Here you can see my poorly drawn lighting diagram for the lighting setup used for these images:
Near the end of the shoot we switched from using studio lighting to using ambient/available lighting for the sake of having a little bit of variety. This allowed for the use of a faster f/1.2 lens for the staged "working shots". These images worked well, and the shallow depth of field helped to eliminate any distracting elements that could be seen in the environment.
A couple of days later, we did an additional image of the Board of Directors of 1st Source Bank. This image was a simple group shot over at the Morris Inn on the campus of The University of Notre Dame. Initially we had a two light setup set and ready to go for the group. The setup was a key light to help add additional directional light to the group and a rim light located to the back right of frame to give a slight accent light to the group. The sun however had different plans and revealed itself right as we got the group outside and ready to go. We scrapped the key light and combined the available sunlight with the accent light to achieve the photo seen here. The light is more harsh than we would usually prefer, but sometimes time constraints, groups, and natural light don't always get along.
We have another shoot coming up soon again with 1st Source, so we're looking forward to capturing that for them in yet another location. Prior to that though we have a few more wedding consultations coming up this week, some Senior Photo products to deliver, a couple physical albums to change some things on, Engagement Sessions to capture, and a couple of our amazing couples' weddings to capture within the month in Michigan! (We're so excited for their weddings coming up so soon because we've been working with some for a year or more and the excitement always mounts in the last weeks leading up to the big day!!)
Unrelated, the weather here has been very odd with it snowing this day last week as we drove to and from Grand Rapids and now being 70-something degrees out today. The weather calls for a bit more warmth in the 70s at the end of the week before it rains this weekend and possibly snows Monday while in the 30s. We honestly haven't felt this way for years, but we're currently so ready for winter to be over because the random one day of snowing doesn't even last long enough to be fun, pretty, or enjoyable just a day later. Plus it's Spring. We want to move our mountain of plants back outside. We plan to grab some more plants this Friday at some point for our garden before checking out Notre Dame's evening exhibition of MFA and BFA candidates since we ourselves went through BFA and MFA programs and like to support and check out the fine art concepts our fellow artists. P.S. There will also be baby goats at the farmer's market Saturday morning, FREE coding classes for girls and women on Saturday throughout the day at the Studebaker building (register for free here: www.eventbrite.com/e/codegirl-tickets-43368519409 ), and the library is hosting a film on immigration at 2 pm with a discussion following that at 3 pm ( www.facebook.com/events/213929879160133 ) lead by professors from the local colleges. We hope you have a great weekend and make sure to check back for next week's Weekly Wednesday!!