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New York University has campuses all over the world. Every five years or so, the university refreshes its archive of photography for advertising and promotional purposes. Recently, its team needed new photos for the Madrid campus, so the team reached out to Spain-based photographer Clint McLean.
Clint has experience working with NYU, as he was previously hired to photograph new students at the beginning of the year on the campus in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, which he resided near a few years back. After moving to Spain, the university hired him again to take portraits of one of its student’s at the Madrid campus. Based on his work from these past project, NYU was certain Clint would be able to capture images that suited the school’s needs.
Before jumping into this assignment, Clint had numerous Skype meetings with Art Director, Christopher Browne, who works at the New York campus, about what his team was looking for with these images. The conversations allowed Clint and Chris to discuss and set expectations for the images.
Seeing what to avoid is almost as helpful as seeing what the client likes. It’s like having a guard rail on each side of the lane, so it becomes very difficult to accidentally swerve off the road.
The shoot was a well-organized five-day project. Each day was busy, Clint and his team were only at each location for a couple of hours, so the team was continually shooting new people and places. The schedule was built around times when class was in session, when students were going to museums, and when they had access to different locations around the campus. Since they shot outside a lot of the time and in the middle of the day, it created a bit of a challenge for Clint with figuring out how to make the places and people look visually appealing. To overcome this, Clint returned to the locations later to get wide, establishing shots. For people, he would look for open shade and work with very subtle flash and a reflector to create his own light.
Clint and his team had a great time working on this project.
One day I was photographing a language-exchange bike ride and thought it would be a great idea to rent a peddle-buggy that would hold Kylie, the Account Manager, Pedro my assistant, and myself. I convinced them that they should peddle and I could shoot as we rode along with the students. I didn’t realize the buggy maxes out at a pretty low top speed so it was like a one-hour spin class for Pedro and Kylie and we (they!) had a pretty hard time keeping up. We got some nice picturess though and luckily Kylie and Pedro saw the humor in the situation.
The team at NYU is overjoyed with the outcome of the photos. In the middle of the project, Clint sent some of his images over to make sure he was on the right path with what the school wanted. Clint was eager to learn NYU’s feedback was all very positive.
Not only was Clint happy to work with NYU again on images, but he was glad to have had such a well-coordinated schedule. Not to mention, he enjoyed visiting the beautiful city of Madrid, too! Clint loved capturing moments in the classrooms and hearing the lectures; it made him miss being a student again. This project is not the end of Clint’s and NYU’s relationship, as the team reunited again this month (November) for yet, another assignment!
Additional Credits:
NYU Senior Account Manager: Kylie Brust
Photography Assistant: Pedro Urech
See more of Clint at clintmclean.com!