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Staff Portraits, Action Shots, Details and Interiors/Exteriors @ Santa Cruz Business (Current eBikes)

Staff Portraits, Action Shots, Details and Interiors/Exteriors @ Santa Cruz Business (Current eBikes)

Santa Cruz local business Current eBikes needed a refresh on their image library for their new website and marketing efforts. I’m an expert in creating diverse, high quality media libraries for my clients – typically in one or two sessions. This typically includes interior and exterior “architecture” style photography, to show the space/location of the business. Next are owner headshots / environmental portraits to highlight them in their natural habitat in a pleasing way. Staff headshots are an easy add-on while we’re at it. Also, if the business has services involved (like working on bikes), it’s great to include candid (or directed) photos showing that service. Lastly are detail / product photos – in this case all inventory comes with great product photography from the manufacturers, so I captured detail shots that could be used in any number of ways for design, advertising or marketing purposes.

Santa Cruz Corporate Lifestyle Headshots

Santa Cruz Corporate Lifestyle Headshots

Something medium to large corporate organizations struggle with in regards to executive portraits is inconsistency. If you try to exactly match certain background with different photographers in different locations over different time periods, even if the photographers do a good job there’s going to be variation in that media collection that will be obvious to everyone. One of the things I like to do is give each person a variety of settings to shoot in so that we’re baking variety into the photographic cake, and those subtle variations in lighting, etc will be much less of a factor. This shoot had 5 or 6 spots I’d picked out for each person with wildly different lighting requirements – ranging from 1/125 to 1/2000 shutter speed to keep a consistent 1.8 to 2.2 aperture setting for a shallow depth-of-field look for all the waist-up shots. All these were shot on a Nikon Z7 with the native 85mm 1.8 S lens with one Profoto B1 flash off-camera shooting through a 30” Profoto Octa. I love keeping my lighting setup simple and mobile, which cuts down on how much time I need with each executive while also delivering a diverse library of images for each person to choose from.

Grand Opening – Aprés @ Four Seasons Silicon Valley

Grand Opening – Aprés @ Four Seasons Silicon Valley

Four Seasons in Palo Alto have a new “Aprés” outdoor-ski-lodge-style addition to their Quattro restaurant patio. I was hired to capture the ambiance, the feel of the setting – couples cozying up to open fire decor enjoying custom Tito’s Vodka-based cocktails. Don’t these photos make you want to check out this place? You should!

Menlo Park Hotel Staff Lifestyle Portraits

Menlo Park Hotel Staff Lifestyle Portraits

There's a new hotel in town – and it's a stunningly beautiful creation named Hotel Nia. I arrived a week before opening, so of course between the final construction, incoming decor and staff training, it was a bit of a chaotic environment to shoot in. Plus the weather was sunny one minute, and pouring rain the next – guaranteeing a variety of settings and a true challenge for the photographer (me). This shoot was dual-purpose – first, to get some food and drink photos for the restaurant, and second to capture some good portraits of various staff for press releases and the website. 

Santa Cruz Business Lifestyle Photography - Cooper Technologies

Santa Cruz Business Lifestyle Photography - Cooper Technologies

Cooper Technologies is a one-stop IT services/consulting shop located in Sash Mill near downtown Santa Cruz. The staff is super friendly, and I think that comes through in our photo shoot below. We started out with group shots of all-hands, both inside their workshop as well as outside in the alley behind the business. I had a lot of fun since I had full creative freedom – can you tell? Last, we walked to the nearby colocation facility (aka server room) for a few dramatically-lit portraits there. Overall I'm really happy with the results (and they are too!). Enjoy a selection of my favorites below: