Real World Corporate—A Case Study
Russell Design in New York approached me to do an annual report shoot for their global engineering client Thornton Tomasetti who wanted the photography to be photojournalistic, gritty… real reality, not the designed and set-dressed kind.
On the shoot day, their client's team of architects and engineers, was to fly in early from New York and meet me at their supplier's concrete casting plant near Toronto. I was to photograph their busy day of meetings and a tour of a factory at peak-production, which could be dangerous, and so even with four hours to shoot, we'd need to work quickly, but carefully. The subjects would be under real working pressures, and I was to remain as unobtrusive as possible. They were to be gone by 2 PM, latest, to beat rush hour traffic and just make their 4:15 return flight to be home in time for dinner.
In my car en route to our 9:30 meeting time, the New York team's messages began arriving:
07:59 AM—7:30 flight delayed... 08:46 AM—Still on the ground & flight now cancelled. Rebook?... 09:48 AM—9AM rebook still on the ground... 10:40 AM—Long line up on the runway means a still longer wait... 12:01 PM—Just landing... 1:06 PM—Arriving at plant. Starving.
Good thing lunch was on it's way… and they agreed to postpone to the next flight out.
