Workforce Magazine’s new issue features the City of Memphis and their tech savvy director of HR with photography by Michael Allen.

Michael chose the new Crosstown Concourse as the location to shoot Director Alex Smith and her team. The magazine feature story showcases the cities move to manage data with cloud based software by SAP and Oracle.

The editors called me just a couple of weeks in December before the shoot was scheduled,  the magazine was going to press for the January issue. We originally wanted to shoot outdoors, but the weather was rainy and cold pretty much every day.

I had worked on several shoots at the new Crosstown Concourse and knew that location would be perfect for this shoot. The mega center was the site of the old Sears warehouse that had been abandoned for years, and was slated to be demolished. Church Health Center set the wheels in motion to restore this huge facility into a modern city center.

For lighting this shoot I used 1 off camera strobe, I positioned Alex and her team along the balcony of the main concourse to get some depth of field, and bounced my key light on a massive white wall about 20 feet to her left. This gave me a natural light look with a bit of commercial styling. I used a bit of warm gel on my flash to match the interior light, which worked nicely for the post production edit. For the main group shot, I added a bounce flash off of a massive concrete column which gave my light a bit of a curve, which was perfect for the large group.

Alex was great to work with, and we knocked out this session quickly. Her schedule was pretty tight, as running a major department for a big city keeps her very busy.

I had a great time working with Alex and her team, they were true professionals. The editors at Workforce loved the images and as you see, met the deadline and went to press on schedule.

I work with dozens of companies with editorial images, my vision and goal is to help my clients look their very best, and show their clients amazing images!