The worst part about doing magazine shoots is that I usually can’t write about the experience until after the issues comes out. About a month ago, I had the pleasure of visiting Daiichi Sankyo’s new training facility in Parsippany and photograph its Senior Director of Sales and Training John Sjovall for the cover of Pharmaceutical Representative Magazine.
Typically, when you go into a corporate shoot the chance of a good backdrop is slim to none. I went into this assignment knowing that the company had built a zen garden in the common area of the office, but was prepared to shoot against a pop-up back drop if need be.
Luckily, the zen garden was more than adequate and Daiichi installed these giant, circular light fixtures in the ceiling that resembled UFOs. After a quick pow wow with the magazine’s art director (the fabulous Laurel Petty), we decided to capture Sjovall in the garden with the parallel circles in the ceiling and on the floor.
Sjovall was a trooper as I tried to balance two Nikon SB-900s with the ambient light that casted a very pretty yellow/green glow. The job was made a tad harder as reflective walls on behind the subject made it hard to hide the strobes.
The final shot was tweaked a bit using Nik’s dynamic skin tool and the background was blurred in post, but the exposure and lighting is pretty much as it was in camera. Cheers to Daiichi Sankyo for giving me an interesting scene to go with a great subject. Now if all pharma companies could switch out their drab white walls for some color and mood lighting…
