Corporate Photography: Cascade Collision Shoot

Recently, I was hired by Cascade Collision, to create an "employee portrait" to accompany a magazine article. It's exciting when a company is willing to take a risk and do an employee portrait that is out of the ordinary, which was the case with Cascade. But before the background story, I've got to put in a plug for this extraordinary company which, unfortunately (*car wrecks suck) I have had the opportunity to work with on two occasions. They're service and quality top notch and I was impressed and returned to them long before they hired me as a commercial photographer and I will continue to use and recommend their company (...praying I don't need their services any time soon...)

On to the photography; the magazine article is titled "Angels among us" and will pay tribute to several employees that have gone outside of the daily job they do to help people in their respective communities deal with hardship and in this case, repairing and restoring a car for free for someone in dire need. We tossed around several ideas for the image like putting the employees on the roof of their building and shooting a more literal interpretation of the title, but in the end thought a dramatic portrait of the employees within their work environment, lit in a way that emphasized each employee throughout the scene, would provide a great image for the story.

We spent a solid couple of hours getting the set-up just right, including moving multiple vehicles around in the shop, creating "welding sparks" with a grinder, hosing the entire shop floor down (multiple times) and re-purposing several additional props to set the stage. Next, we lit each person with a strobe and grid and my assistant traveled the shop floor with one additional strobe to light other areas of interest within the scene (i.e. Logo on Honda in the back, etc.) to later composite into the final image.

The employees were a pleasure to work with and we were quite pleased with the final image. Great work Cascade and continue to inspire us with your service in the community!

Portait:

On the job:


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