The other day I did a PR job for a story about a tech project undertaken by our local city council in conjunction with two other tech companies.
Part of the job required individual portraits of three key team members. We were on location at the new Christchurch City Council building, which is fantastic because it’s got some great ‘readily available’ backdrops for this kind of thing.
Everyone involved in the photo shoot had a tight schedule (it took many weeks and several reschedules just to be able to get everyone to attend the shoot) so I wanted to get the portraits done as quickly as possible to let everyone get back to work.
I scouted the building prior to the shoot, and I knew I could shoot againt three good backdrops in the lobby. I barely even had to move – I just shot one portrait, swung around to point in a new direction to shoot the next one, etc. Highly efficient.
For these first two portraits a single speedlight on a lightstand was shot through an umbrella, with a reflector held just out of frame on the opposite side. Again, it was a nice quick setup with minimal fuss but giving a great look.
For the third portrait I changed up the lighting a little to have the flash more on-axis, keeping the lightstand next to me.
The textured concrete wall in the lobby provided a great backdrop with light skimming across it coming from the main glass entrance doors on camera right, and you can’t even tell that a giant Christmas tree is jusssssst out of frame on the left 
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