Ottawa Corporate Photographer – CIRA’s Annual Report to Members

I was thrilled to work with my long-time clients the Canadian Internet Registration Authority on their Annual Report to Members. This is the quintessential type of work for a corporate photographer: more than just headshots and portraits, we need to convey the people that are behind the organization. We only had a morning to work, and turn-around for the final images was due just as fast, so we knew we needed to get everything right in-camera. I was familiar with the office, but scouted a few days before to make sure I could map-out my lighting options and have everything written down so we knew exactly where and how we were going to set up.

The creative brief was simple enough: to allow for ample room in the image for text, graphs and other information that could be conveyed in the annual report. The images we produced are a sort of “Corporate Stock” where they’re sort of like stock-photography, but unique to the organization. They would be later complimented with actual stock photos, and other images they’d had taken through the year as needed.

The great thing about working with the people at CIRA is that they’re so nice, and I know them. I’ve been their event photographer for a few years. I know them, they know me. This is usually a wall a photographer has to break down quickly on a shoot, but the subjects already having a comfort level with the photographer and a mutual trust means we can get to work producing great images that much faster. This comes out in the images, which show the real people working at the company. Not just a stock photo anyone can buy; it’s theirs, and it’s unique.

Being a corporate photographer is also about being conscious of your clients time. I prep, get there early, and take as little of their time as possible. In a business environment, time is money, and they all have better things to do than stand in front of my lens. So I shoot, get what I need, and send them on their way. As is always the case, I couldn’t have done it without a great deal of help, in this case Alex, who really felt the burn of a short but busy morning.

If you own a .CA domain name, then you’ve interacted with CIRA. You can see their report to members online here.

Posted on Thursday, August 28th, 2014 at 9:49 am. Filed under: Commercial, Portraits Tags: Annual Report, Canadian Internet Registration Authority, CIRA, Commercial Photography, Corporate Photography, Elinchrom, Portraits, Report to Members RSS 2.0 feed.