Bee Beautiful Studios

A week ago at work (South Texas College) I was assigned to photograph the college president. The school president’s schedule is always very tight. I got lucky that she was already going to be taking photos with The Monitor Newspaper in the morning so I was able to piggy-back on that. She was scheduled to be interviewed and photographed on a Monday so the Friday before I did some location scouting and light testing.

I asked a colleague to sit in and recommend locations since she is the facility manager. I was only going to have about 5-10mins with the president so I had to have a simple setup. The lighting equipment I used was the Canon Speedlite 600EX‑RT Flash, mounted and controlled by PocketWizards FlexTT5 Transceivers and diffused by a Westcott Rapid 26″ Octa Softbox. The camera I used was the Canon 5D MK III with a 70-200mm 2.8 Sigma lens.

Of all the locations we tested out we only used two. When you are photographing high profile subjects you want to make them travel the least possible and make them feel as comfortable as possible. My colleague joined me Monday to assist me with lighting and hair for the president. Make sure to take assistants with you when doing these type of portraits. Of the two locations used only one photo was selected and published. View the shot below.

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