All of the shoots for this magazine tend to be a bit open ended – they want a portrait, but they usually don’t have layouts until much later in the process, after the shoot. So it is important for me to get a wide variety of shots. I not only need more than one set up, in case it goes on the cover and the interior, but I also need to shoot everything in both portrait and landscape to help the designer out with the layout.

Executives like Bill Kimsey often sit on boards and have very busy schedules (even though I believe he is technically retired), so speed is always a factor. I make sure that I am set up and ready to go the instant the subject walks into the room; it’s all about prep work. I don’t want to miss an opportunity for an off the cuff additional photo because I’ve used up what little spare time there is futzing with my planned shot.

Since I only had a limited amount of time to shoot, and only one large conference room for a set, I opted to two one setup using natural light, and one set up using strobes. If I’d tried to do two lit options I would have had to set up both before he arrived since there wasn’t time to break down one set and build the next one while he waited. I felt that two setups in the room would cramp my shots a bit, so using natural light for my second setup seemed like the best plan.

I photographed him using a simple strobe set up (softbox, camera right), and then walked him a feet feet over to the corner of the conference room where there were windows on both sides. I included a plexi-glass globe as a prop as part of the article is about his involvement in the firm’s development in China. It could have been a cheesy addition, especially since globes are so ubiquitous in corporate photography, but I think for this shot it worked out well.

The windows in front and back gave me an instant key light, fill light, and rim light! can’t get any simpler than that. I ended up with two different shots in just a few minutes. Art director happy with more than one option, subject happy because I made him look good and only took a few minutes, and photographer happy because the art director and the subject are happy. Done and done.

For this issue, it was a very special treat to shoot Kimberly Aiken, who in addition to being an Ernst & Young alumnus, was also awarded the title of Miss America in 1994, the fifth African American to be awarded the title.

Photographing a former Miss America was a refreshing change to some of the older folks that I end up shooting for the magazine, and she was absolutely lovely. I photographed her in her home in Ohio right after Easter and took advantage of some beautiful flowers she had around the house to round out some of the images.

And of course beautiful parents have beautiful kids – I love the fake tattoo her daughter is sporting there.

This year, in order to relieve some of this pressure and to get a better feel for each person’s home environment, I traveled to each of their home cities and photographed them in their offices, both traditional sitting portraits and then I followed them around through their day to create some journalistic-style day in the life shots. It was an exciting project and I was very pleased with the overall results. Below are some samples of the banners that were made with the three Americas winners.

You can view a gallery of the Chairman’s Values Award nominees that I shot for the program here. I also shot the abstracts of the trophy for some of the collateral.

This is the fourth year that I’ve shot the Chairman’s Value Awards, and interestingly CVA 2006 was the first professional gig that I had as a photographer back in 2006. The look was very different back then and I wasn’t involved much in the planning stages. In fact, I’d never shot high key before and had to spend the weekend researching techniques. Unfortunately Zach Arias’ tutorial on white seamless hit the net a couple years too late to help me at the time. But I muddled through and didn’t completely screw it up. Would I do things different now? You betcha. Would I be in the position I am today if I hadn’t shot this campaign? Probably not. This project opened up a lot of opportunities for me. Which goes to show you: if you don’t know how to do something, don’t run. Figure out what you need to do and go for it. Here’s the final product that ran as a national ad: