Medical Product Photography for Large Corporation

Some products are more difficult to photograph than others depending on what kind of shape they are in when I get them. We all know that the products that we buy do not look like the photos on the package or that Big Macs look nothing like the idealized photo on the menu.

I have had wrinkled, crinkled, warped, folded, stained and ripped products sent to me which can make my job "interesting". In cases where I could not get a clean replacement, I sometimes I could fix the product with anything from a hot steam iron and glue to retouching in Photoshop.

Other products are too complicated to shoot without simplifying them. This is the case of some of the heart monitor pouches I photographed for Kimberly-Clark. Imagine a small pouch connected to several feet of ribbon to tie it to the patient. Instead of showing ALL the ribbon (which looked like tangled spaghetti), we got permission to cut them down to a manageable size.

Hopefully, you wil never need to get an IV drip inserted. If you do, these will make the job easier.

These baby items were very small. It is amazing that humans start out this tiny.

Hero Photography for Corporate Safety Campaign

See last year's campaign

Kimberly-Clark is a world class corporation that makes many of the brand name products you might use everyday like Kleenex, Huggies and Cottonelle. Every year they have a Safety Campaign aimed at maintaining the safety-culture of their company. Last year I took a set of photos of workers decked out in Personal Protection Equipment, or "PPE" as it is known in the biz. See previous campaign.

This year, the theme changed slightly from workers in the factory to family members. It was decided to use a young child and his father for the "hero" photo. This was a real father and son to make it more realistic, and it was probably the only way to do it. The young boy was no more than 5 years old so we would be fighting a short attention span. Having the parents there would help me coax the emotions that the art director was asking for. This is was challenging for many reasons.

The concept for the photo was that the boy would be seen hugging his father dressed in Dad's PPE which consisted of safety goggles and vest. This is where the process got fun. The art director wanted black hair and a black shirt on a black background. Not only that, the boy was to wear wrap-around, highly reflective safety glasses that reflect EVERYTHING! I knew this was going to be a challenge to light.

In all, I used 1 softbox, 1 umbrella fill, 1 horizontal strip light and 1 gridded spot light and some reflectors. Removing any of those would have made parts of our subjects fade into the black background especially the hair.

All the safety goggles were highly reflective and showed all my studio lights. The highlights had to be managed.

We tried 3 different sets of goggles to give the art director a choice, and soon we were done. I tried every trick in the book to get the right expression from our young talent... I even bribed him with a robot from my childhood toy collection. Talk about going the extra mile.

The retouching phase of the project got a bit "hairy" as I removed individual stray hairs, and gave the Dad a hair cut. Below is a BEFORE and AFTER detail of the photo.

BEFORE Retouching

This process involved rebuilding the shirt collar and skin texture on the neck, plus adding back digital hairs in certain locations. I also removed a major unavoidable softbox reflection and added some color to the boy's eyes. Overall, I am very pleased with the results given the circumstances.

AFTER Retouching

This poster will be translated into 21 languages and hung up in factories all over the world. Pretty cool.

Maternity Photos with Marie & Justinas

Justinas and Marie are two of my oldest friends in Atlanta. I have know them since the days when riding motorcycles in the north Georgia mountains was a weekly event. We spent many a mile together and had some great adventures. It was wonderful when they got married and then pregnant later on.

Justinas and his brother, Paulius, are photographers just like their father back in Lithuania. The love of photography is something that we all have in common. Justinas was making a movie of the shoot.

I was honored to be able to take some of these photos of Marie, but I wanted to include Justinas in some too. He is always behind the camera so this time, the roles would be reversed for him. I also thought it would be important to show them as a couple. I love the negative space between them in the next photo.

We decided to meet at my office where we could take advantage of an open studio and also the last remaining Fall foliage outside. Many trees had already lost their vibrancy at this point, but I put my secret weapon to good use... I simply call it the THE TREE. This one always has incredible color.

My favorite tree in Atlanta still had a little Fall color left... but only if the sun hit it just right. The same tree is in the background of the image above and below. The only difference is that sun peeked out for a few brief moments on the latter one. I call this "boom pow" because this kind of color knocks me out.

Pretty soon the evening light was toast so we headed indoors to try a few different scenarios. The first was to photograph Marie against a painted blue wall using a ring flash. If you have never seen one of those, it would look similar to sticking your camera lens through the hole of a large doughnut shaped flash. It creates a signature ring highlight in the eyes and a soft shadow around a subject who is in close proximity to a wall. This look is not for everyone, but Marie pulls it off.

Then I wanted to try some dark background portraits with strong directional light. We used a sheer mesh here.

I wanted a very strong rim light to help define her against the dark background.

She then changed into something a little less comfortable. How she wrapped herself in this thing is a mystery, but I think I saw her twirling into it while Justinas held the end.

This is one of my favorites because of the modeling on that perfect belly, and the expectant look of motherhood. She will make an incredible mom.

Web Site Design for BeWell USA

I was hired by BeWell to create two versions of their company web site. This company sells products all over the world so each site had to be tailored to the host country since they sell different products, have different regulations and contact procedures.

As a money saving strategy, we decided to build one completely, clone it and then change the information for the remaining country. In fact, this process was so efficient that we plan on rolling out several product-specific sites this way. This was the perfect plan to get a lot of web sites built in less time than normal. Visit the USA site at www.Bewell-USA.com

Head Shot Portrait for an Atlanta Doctor

This is one of those cases where I needed to match a style of portrait that I took several years before. Luckily, I meticulously measure the position of my equipment, flash power and camera settings for every job I do. That way if an office manager says "we need a photo of our new doctor and we want it to look JUST LIKE the ones you took 2 years ago, I can do it.

I have even kept old studio flash sets due to recurring jobs... even though I have much more capable and expensive gear now. The bottom line is that it is faster for me to set up the old stuff instead of recalibrate a previous setup with new gear. You can decide for yourself if that makes me smart or lazy.

Web Site Design for BugBand Insect Repellent

Every couple of years, I get to update the web site for one of my oldest clients, BugBand Natural Insect Repellent. I went very colorful with an emphasis on green which is now a major direction for the retail packaging and displays.

My favorite enhancement to the site is the new graphic headers on many of the pages. I wanted to show the various situations where the products could be used. Visit the site at www.BugBand.net.

Package Design for Ice N Heat Ultimate Combo Product

I love package design because it is a challenge to grab the attention of consumers in a busy retail store. People tend to make up their minds in a split second or two.

How does one balance the product name and image, key points, primary and secondary branding, box orientation, special callouts, required information etc. etc.?

Here is the final box for Ice N Heat's Ultimate Combo which is a unique hot and cold compress product. It contains 2 types of compresses that attach to the same body wrap using velcro. Anyway, there is a lot the box front needed to say, and it was like a puzzle to get them all to fit. This is version #18... which is shows how many layouts and alternate text versions were tried.

This particular client, BeWell USA, Inc., makes their own health-based products, but also makes private label versions on request for pharmacy chains. This is a factor in the design that required that I keep the primary branding area easily changed out with different logos.

This project included graphic design, photo retouching, illustration, copywriting and marketing... the whole shebang.