Corporate Headshots with Marloes

I was hired by a company representing the WTC Netherlands Alliance Magazine to photograph Marloes, a Dutch lawyer from Amsterdam, currently living in NYC and working for E&Y.  We took a variety of shots starting with these...

As I'm sure you can tell, we spent our time together in Time Square.  This felt like the best setting for her since she's showcasing her time in NYC and to non-New Yorker's, what's more characteristic of NYC than Time Square?

I was thrilled to see that a few of these images made it to the WTC Netherlands Magazine.  Thanks to Frank van Bergen from ASEGA Media for finding me for this gig and to Marloes for taking some time out of her busy day to capture the snapshot of what her life is like now in NYC.

World Trade Center Netherlands Alliance Magazine #6 - TOC

World Trade Center Netherlands Alliance Magazine #6 - Full Article

Corporate Headshots for Debbie

I consider Debbie to be a great friend and client as well.  Debbie is the CEO of Stride and had an upcoming speaking engagement.  She needed updated images for her website and to give to event organizers so we met up in the city to capture these images.  Fortunately, we had a nice day in the city to shoot.  We walked around for about 30 minutes and stopped at a few locations I scoped out prior to us meeting.  Here are a couple favorites of mine.

Corporate Headshots in lower Manhattan

A few weeks ago I was hired to shoot some corporate headshots for a small company called Mastiff LLC located in downtown Manhattan.  They are a property development and financial services firm.  In my consultation meeting with them, we were discussing what they wanted from the upcoming session and suddenly they stopped to ask, “Would you like some cereal?”  I felt like I immediately got their humor and personality.

My contact is Marissa and she told me about the desire for them to have headshots for the three of them and we also discussed some recent blogging that she’s started to do for the company.  She wanted to capture some lifestyle images for the blog. The topics focus on the work they do and how they split their time across a few locations where they have property.   

Once the formal shots were done we headed outside.  Fortunately, we had a beautiful day.  Their offices are near the South Street Seaport.  I haven’t been down there in a long time and was surprised to know there are still sections of that area that have been closed since Hurricane Sandy.

Such a fun group to work with.  We talked about some fun projects to do in the future so I'm looking forward to being a part of that soon.

BTS: Stride Video Shoot

Okay, maybe the behind the scenes (BTS) material should come after the project but I have it now so I'm sharing it.  

Aldric (upper left), Darrin, Theresa, Lucille (lower left), Ian, Mike, Lucille (right)

A couple months ago I was contacted to put together a video that highlights what its like to work at Stride, an agile consultancy based in New York City.  We're shooting this in two parts.  First, we interviewed three employees, plus the Head Of Talent, Lucille to introduce the video for us.

Theresa (left), Darrin/Theresa (middle), Jenna (right)

There were three of us working the shoot this time.  Myself, Theresa, and Jenna.  While Theresa and I were shooting, Jenna grabbed shots of our talent and the crew working the scene.  Great stuff!  Soon we'll be shooting the second part of the video which will include some more interviews and a company meeting.  Stay tuned for updates on the finished video.

Darrin (upper left with Jenna in the lens reflection), Theresa (lower left), Ian & Mike (right)

I was fortunate enough to have some great help on this shoot:
Theresa Keil: 2nd shooting, video interviews
Jenna Fernandez: BTS shots + assistant

Web -> http://DarrinEstepPhotography.com
G+ -> http://plus.google.com/+DarrinEstepPhotography/
Facebook -> https://www.facebook.com/DarrinEstepPhotography
Twitter -> https://twitter.com/destep001 

Photographer workshop

A photographer friend of mine, Brian, put together a casual gathering to network and shoot at a place called StudiosLIC in Queens, NY.  I met Brian at one of the first meet-up’s I ever attended in NYC in 2008 when I was first learning about photography and how to use light.  For this shoot he brought a model he had worked with recently and others joined in the fun in front of the lens as the night went on. 

Jessenia is from Florida and new to NYC.  She was very nice to work with, great smile and doesn’t need guidance however, she's also open to feedback if you want her to move or stand in a certain way.

Mike is a guy that works at the studio and somehow ended up in front of the camera.  I snapped a few of him as well.  He didn’t seem to mind giving us his best for a little while in front of the camera.

Overall, this was a nice opportunity to meet some other photographers and get a chance to play in a different space.  Thanks Brian for setting it up!

Agile 2014 Event

I've either been attending or covering the Agile Day event for many years at this point.  Its a great crowd and a bit of a reunion since I run into people I've worked with for over 10 years.  For the past several years its been at Pace University. 

Joe Krebs (on the left, above) has been running the show for several years now and has announced that he'll be passing the torch for next year.  It'll be exciting to see how the show evolves in the future.

Large crowd joined in for the keynote speaker.

This year, I managed to grab a few shots of a live-blogger of sorts.  He had some great sketches.

Lots of great speakers and reuniting.

Another sketch and juggling?  Yes, juggling.

The afternoon wrapped up with the Open Space.  Joe kicked off the introduction of the concept which is for the audience to determine what the topics are and the time slot and then if people are interested, there will be a conversation.  You can come and go as you please.  It can make for interesting conversation.

Amy's Headshots

I've been using a new service called Thumbtack to obtain business.  So far, so good.  The way it works is that a person in need of a professional service, like photography perhaps, would post a request for...oh, I don't know - headshots let's say.  As a service provider of said headshots, I have the opportunity to bid on the request.  If the requester likes the quote and my profile, they can respond and offer me the gig.  Amy did just that.

Amy's an actor in NYC and her agency wanted some new headshots done for her portfolio.  There were some pretty specific things they were after so we focused on that first and then did some other things to play a bit later in the shoot.

I called on Nicole, a makeup artist I'd worked with in the past.  She's great!  Very reliable, does great work and is always willing to help with more than make-up duty.  

We started with a variety of colors and tops on black since part of the requirement was to get some clean shots of Amy with this variety.  These are some of my favorites.

Whenever I do headshots, I like to get some that probably lean more toward beauty shots vs. a traditional headshot.  Here are a few that I liked of that set.

One of the fist things Amy mentioned to me when I met her in person is that she is challenged with *not* smiling.  I had to stop and think about that for a minute since I would say its much more common for people to struggle with having a nice, natural smile on camera.  Sounded like a challenge to me to come away with at least a few for her that she was a bit more serious.  As you can see from the featured image in the set above, she nailed it.  She even knew of a technique that I believe Peter Hurley invented called the "squinch".  Essentially its 'squinting your eye lids in a way that portrays confidence'.  We had fun playing with the look.

We then moved onto another location.  The set of three above are actually shot in natural light (which I don't tend to do very often).  I've shot in this location before and really like the options it gives you as an artist.

Only a few feet away from the previous set with Amy sitting on the bench, there was a post I had her stand near for a few images with a blazer and a set of glasses.  Again, with the goal of giving the agency some options with making Amy more marketable.

Finally, a few from the same location as the blazer but with just the green top and a bit more casual.  It was a real pleasure working with Amy for the first time.  She is as nice and down-to-earth as she is beautiful.  As the shoot went on, she also provided laughs "on the set".  I'll leave you with a few silly faces that came through in the session that got us all laughing.  

America's Night Of Hope Event

Back in January of 2013 I reconnected on a shoot of mine with a high school friend, Eric Forsythe.  I found out during that time that he is a full-time, very accomplished photographer out of Houston, TX. We've been in touch ever since.

A few months ago an opportunity came up for us to work a pretty large event together. Eric is the main photographer for Joel Osteen and they had an event called "America's Night Of Hope" planned for Yankee Stadium on June 6th.  Eric asked me to help shoot it.

A chance to work with a friend and all access to Yankee Stadium!?  That's a "yes"!  I picked up Eric at his hotel in the city and we parked near a train station that would take us right to the stadium.  Once we arrived, we met with the other photographers and marketing folks to go over the game plan for photography coverage during the event.

They ran through a rehearsal which we used to get an idea of placement and timing.  Very helpful.  Shortly after that we grabbed a little food before heading off to capture the main event. I was set to cover the stage from the stands and could roam anywhere to get the best shot.  Eric and one other photographer were on either side of the stage.

Composite of 4 images.  I'm certainly not a Photoshop wizard but this definitely gives the full scope of a sold-out Yankee Stadium.

Nice event!  Joel sold out Yankee Stadium (approximately 50,000 seats) so I'd call it a success even if that were the only measurement.  Looking forward to future work with Eric.

Urban Tour

Ralph reached out to me through Facebook and asked if I could help him put together a set of images that would look different than other classmates with a city setting.  I've recently become more familiar with SOHO and opted for that area to shoot in.  As it turns out, it fits well with Ralph's other interest which is fashion. He has a blog that he keeps on the subject. 

We started with a colorful setting in front of a door and wall that has graffiti and some kind of paper mâché. 

To add to the NYC feel, I had him head down the subway stairs and then stop for a break in the Vive la crepe for something to drink. 

We finished with a stroll down the cobble stone street and then to some more formal shots.

Thanks Ralph for letting me show you around SOHO.  We definitely captured the urban vibe of NYC. 

Just for fun - 'How I got to work'

So, I got a new toy.  Its a GoPro Hero3.  Love it.  Its small.  Its fun and you can take it just about anywhere.  So, one day last week I took the GoPro with me on the train and down the street and into the building, all set to music.  I did the edit on the train on the way back home.  Fun. 

Noise

I've had the recent pleasure to shoot some corporate gigs with my friend Joe.  This session was at a company called Noise.   Nice group of people.  They are an agency that focuses on creating campaigns, products and content for the young adult market.  They've recently taken on an engagement with Joe to bring Scrum practices to their organization.  Here are a few of the images from the shoot.

I also got some environmental images as well.  Since they're called "Noise", they of course, had a turn table in the office.  Of course.

MediaMath Corporate Shoot

Ah, the corporate shoot.  MediaMath has a pretty large room that we were able to use for this shoot that was scheduled on one particular day.  Each person had your standard, classic headshot (as shown below) and then we also did one "with a prop".  Those were fun.  Some were into it and some weren't.  They were funny nonetheless.

Below are a few of the 150+ images I took over multiple days and multiple locations. 

This now makes the third shoot done for MediaMath.  See more images from a recent event called The Future Series and a few months back the 5th Birthday Party.

A Great Designer

I worked with Prerak for about 9 months and he was one of those few (for me, anyway) that I really connected with.  He's a great designer and we got to know each other  through a mutual interest in gadgets, great design, and photography.  

Prerak has helped me with a couple projects now that were beyond my Photoshop knowledge and I look forward to future collaboration.

A few days before his last day, I had my camera in the office and we went out for about 30 minutes to grab some shots for him personally and for his website.  We went out to a place in midtown that I've shot at before and here are some of my favorites...