One of my favorite assignments over the past several weeks was for the Amata Offices of Chicago which needed corporate photography including corporate headshots, several environmental portraits, and a group photo. Amata offers corporate office suites along with all the bells and whistles including meeting space & phone answering services which is especially helpful for companies that have managed to outgrow their home offices.
As a kudos to their clientele, they offered an open headshot session where people could stop in and get an awesome portrait for their LinkedIn and other social media profiles in a matter of minutes courtesy of Amata.
With the help of my Assistants Whitney and Conrad, we had the lighting set up in no time and Beth and Anne from Amata ran the scheduling seamlessly with little wait time not to mention keeping their clients incredibly entertained while they waited for their session. Here are a few selects from the 50 corporate headshots we managed to complete in just a few hours.
After a quick break, it was on to part two. 8 environmental portraits and a group photo for the law offices of Birnbaum, Haddon, Gelfman & Arnoux who share the corporate suite with Amata. This is most definitely a lot to take on in just an afternoon but we had strategically planned and scouted before the assignment and with two assistants, I knew we could nail it. Granted, I may have forgotten to hydrate, needed to remind myself to breathe, and felt like I was training for a marathon but the results were awesome.
This portrait of Jacalyn Birnbaum has turned out to be one of my new favorites. I am not the only one who has a collection of toys in the office to keep myself entertained.
What you don’t see is that on the wall that is not pictured is that Jackie has a cabinet with each shelf dedicated to a particular theme associated with an animated character. A few shelves are taken up by the villains: figurines of the Evil Queen from Snow White and Ursula, the sea witch from The Little Mermaid. Below this, there is a full shelf dedicated to the heroic figures of Jiminy Cricket and Yoda.
No, Jackie does not strike me as someone who hits Comic-Con or hangs out at the Renaissance Faire, not ever. Rather she uses her display to explain to her clients who are pursuing a divorce that the whole unfolding can seriously bring out the worst in all of us and her job is to act as the wise intermediary, the Yoda, the Jiminy Cricket, that can pull everything back to the center and add diplomacy to the process. I so did not see that coming and love it! Pretty sure Jackie was the true character that day!
And the grand finale…the group photo of the Birnbaum, Haddon, Gelfman & Arnoux law team for the article that will be appearing in Forbes.
