Anatomy Of A Location Shoot

Anatomy Of A Location Shoot

by William Lulow

I haven’t published an article like this for a while, so here is another attempt to describe a fairly simple, corporate location shoot I did last week. I actually made arrangements for this job while on vacation and scheduled it for the same week I returned, so things were a bit hectic in the preparation. But, having done so many of these, it actually was a piece of cake.These kinds of shoots I can usually do by myself. They really don’t require a large complement of assistants, art directors or complicated equipment. It is a simple “in and out” proposition. I can usually photograph 20 people in a half-day’s worth of shooting, which saves the client quite a bit over individuals coming to the studio. So, I do quite a number of these kinds of jobs. Once the initial set up is done on the location site, it goes fairly quickly.

One of the first things I do when I get an assignment to make images for a company’s website is to check on their existing one so that I can come close to matching their images (if they have any) so that they blend seamlessly with what they have already. In this case, the portraits of their staff were quite varied, so I decided to make them basically fit my standards. This worked out particularly well in this case because they liked the images so much. I gave them many from which to choose, so now, they want me to photograph their other offices as well.

So, I usually begin by assembling everything I need for the job including posing stools and backgrounds. Since most of my equipment is stored in cases and not all over the studio, it’s an easy task to load everything into the car.

My location kit consists of one bag for powerpacks and a few lights, one for just the mainlight and some reflectors, one for the light stands and tripods, one for the background stands, the camera bag and an accessories bag. I always bring my own hand truck to make transportation easy.

When I do corporate shoots, I try to find a large enough space to set up my mini-studio to make the portraits. A conference room usually does the trick:

Here, I’m getting ready to put up the background and get started setting up my lights.

With the lights and camera setup, I’m ready to begin making my photos. I make some test exposures on the first person, getting the lighting just right. After that, every other one gets relatively the same treatment. There are some adjustments that need to be made along the way, especially if there are women employees. They need to have an extra fill-in light to remove most shadows. Men can take the shadows better and it actually makes their photos look stronger.

Here’s the extra fill-in light set up:

This fill in light is a small softbox I use especially for location shoots where space is often restricted. The one I use in the studio is considerably larger, but this one does the trick of keeping the fill light soft but secondary to the main light. The light closest to the background is used to create a gradient on the set paper to add some dimension to the shots.

Here’s the lighting I use for men. You can see a little shadow on the subject’s right side, but it is mostly transparent and gives added depth:

The finished shots are pretty much what I achieve in the studio. They are sent to the client via Dropbox for them to choose the images they want. I then do the necessary retouching, color balancing and cropping and deliver the finals via email.

For those interested in specs, these images are shot with my powerpacks on fairly low power (about 125 w/s for the main and less than 100 w/s for accent lights and fill-ins. Exposures are ISO 100, f/11 @ 1/125th of a second. Images are downloaded to Adobe Bridge, batch processed in Lightroom and retouched individually in Photoshop.