Here’s a project that began seven years ago and just wrapped up last month. Back in 2004, I got a call from an art director at a landscape architecture firm that was completing a $7 million renovation of a 70 acre piece of land, transforming it into a nature preserve for a non-profit. They had replaced alien plants with species indigenous to the area and they created beautiful bridges, paths and sculpture gardens. They needed photographs depicting plant specimens and landscapes for a guidebook. Oddly, they came to me. I say oddly because I shoot almost exclusively portraiture. I don’t even show still life pictures in my portfolio, let alone plants. But there was something about the personality of my photographs that the client thought would work well for the book. I liked her and the project. And in spite of, or maybe because of how different this project was, I decided that I wanted to do it.
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Recently, one of our East Coast photographers was contacted by a multicultural ad agency asking him to bid on a print campaign for a major airline. After the photographer got an idea of the concept and the picture requirements from the art buyer, he passed the comps, shot list and contact info on to me to work out the details of the estimate.

Interestingly, the photographer had met the art buyer years earlier when the photographer was just getting started in the business. The art buyer asked him to keep in touch. So he did–by sending him regular updates on the progress of his portfolio. Over time, the two became friendly enough that the photographer invited the art buyer to his wedding. Finally, years after meeting, the perfect project came across the AB's desk and he called the photographer to quote on it.
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We recently helped one of our food/people photographers quote on an ad shoot for an agency that specializes in reaching Hispanic audiences. The ad agency's client was a major food brand, and the product they were promoting was a household name. The campaign was aimed at Hispanics and was to be used only in Spanish language media (primarily grocery store point-of-purchase). The agency needed pictures of a celebrity chef (standing, wearing chef jacket, looking at the camera), a recipe she makes using the product, and four still-life pictures of various products in their product line. All of the pictures would be shot on white background, at a studio near the agency and talent, in one shoot day. The usage was six images for "unlimited use in the U.S. for one year."
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