New Jersey Resources recently commissioned me to do the photography for their annual report. They wanted to emphasize the contributions of their employees this year and I ended up photographing about 200 people over four days for the cover and inside gatefold.
The front cover revealed twelve of those portraits through a die cut hole and the rest of my studio portraits were shown on the inside gatefold.
We had a very ambitious schedule photographing someone every 6 minutes over the course of 4 days. The pace was challenging but I actually enjoyed being forced to get a great reaction from my subjects in such a short time.
We used 7 different pastel colored seamless backgrounds and coordinated those colors with whatever the subjects were wearing. My assistants and I had to work extremely fast and efficiently, changing the backdrops between each subject while customizing the lighting to work perfectly with their faces and hair.
Island Beach State Park with its pristine beaches made a perfect setting for a sunrise portrait. Start of day from Manhattan: 3:30 am
Inside the annual report NJR featured five of my environmental portraits. Those lifestyle photos depicted their employees enjoying life after hours. Although each background was drastically different strong backlit sunlit scenes tied together the visual theme.
Continuing with that sunny theme, I photographed one of NJR’s employees indulging his favorite hobby at a local racetrack.
The most challenging part of this photo was having to stand in the middle of a somewhat busy street with my camera and tripod.
Mother and daughter at sunset. Photographing young children with their mothers is often more challenging than photographing a child by themselves. My favorite photo came moments before sunset and was one of the last shots out of hundreds.
A mother/daughter portrait in the woods. We had to push our publication deadline a little while waiting to shoot during peak fall colors.