Lab Photography
Perfect lab photos don’t just happen. It takes a little bit of planning to get what you want. And, that planning also gives us the perfect opportunity to create “happy accidents”.
Recently, we were asked to estimate a photo shoot for a web site rebranding project that needed lab photos for a life sciences company.
Most of the photographs were to be shot in three different lab spaces in Cambridge. But, there wasn’t a firm shot list yet, so it was difficult to create an estimate that would be accurate and that would get us the “best” images.
Even the definition of what “best” meant was something that had to be defined.
After all, I know we can create images that are interesting to me all day long in just about any space. But, for them to be interesting to the client, and more importantly, to the client’s prospective investors, we needed to do some research.
It started with a conversation about how many major areas we needed to illustrate, how many lifestyle photos we would like to accomplish for the rebranding and some approximate timing. That got us to a rough estimate, which also included a site visit.
Site Visits for Perfect Lab Photos
The site visit is one of the best ways to ensure that the client gets the best ROI for their photoshoot budget.
A walk through of the space allows us to start planning for the actual shoot day.
We asked lots of questions. For example:
- Where will each shoot be set up?
- Who needs to be in the image?
- What lab gear will be featured?
- Do we have photo ready lab wardrobe?
- Does anything need to be cleaned/organized?
- When is that part of the lab available? And the people?
- What is the most expedient method to get the most shooting time for the number of images on the list?
- Are there other images that we can get from each set up?
- etc.
On the day of the shoot, these notes guided us through our different sets.
Everyone knew where we would be, what, and who, needed to be there and what our criteria would be for perfect lab photos.
With only a few minor tweaks, we were able to accomplish the entire list, plus a couple of additional, bonus, images, to make for a very happy client.
And, a great rebranded web site!
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