Manager Portraits – Agile Wind Power
Corporate portrait shoots in Zurich often bring me into contact with some very interesting innovative teams, which was the case recently when I was asked to photograph the management team and board of directors at Agile Wind Power in Dübendorf, just outside of Zurich, Switzerland. This was one of those portrait shoots that none of the subjects really have time for, since they’re all very busy rolling out a futuristic new wind turbine design – one of which has just been installed in Germany.
As I often do in these cases, I took a fast and light approach, preferring to shoot without much artificial light, apart from a simple on-camera flash. That gave me the chance to duck in and out of tight offices, making use of different backgrounds in a relatively tight environment.
Fortunately, each of my subjects at Agile had a great attitude about being photographed. I had about 15 minutes to shoot both headshots and casual office-environment portraits for each of the ten managers. They made my job pretty easy and we were done with most of them in less than ten minutes or so.
One of my favourite things to do at these kinds of shoots is to incorporate the environment in the composition. There’s usually plenty to work with in most offices. The biggest challenges are picking a simple background, creating some nice light on the subject and then “making it happen” (getting a good look our of my subject – quickly), so that they can return back to their work ASAP. The pictures from this shoot had to be delivered same day, since they went into a corporate announcement that was sent out that evening.