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Raleigh-based photographer Jillian Clark recently traveled to Hawaii with IBM to photograph employee portraits at their Best of IBM event. After being contacted by producer Alisha Hawkins at Centerline Digital, a local marketing agency that frequently works with IBM, Jillian was excited to work with a new client in a beautiful location!
The Best of IBM is an annual event where they honor the top 500 employees from around the world. This year, they wanted to photograph 50 of those employees and showcase their portraits in their headquarters in New York City.
Once Jillian was involved in the project, she worked closely with Alisha and Creative Director Matt Calkins to organize the pre-production.
After a few emails, my assistant and I met Alisha at her office and had a few conference calls with Matt. We went over their creative brief and talked logistics. They wanted to use light bars as an abstract of the classic IBM 8 bar logo. They had seen where I had already done some work like this on my website, so they were confident the fit was good creatively.
With the concept nailed down, the next step was setting up the location and bringing all the necessary equipment. While they shipped some supplies over, they also sourced equipment from two different rental houses that happened to be on two separate islands. Alisha also worked to find local Digitech Josh Harmsworth and hair and makeup stylist, Judith Cunningham.
The shoot took place over the course of 6 days and was on a strict schedule. The first day, they focused on setting up in a conference room in the hotel and decided on the final creative direction for the shoot. The next day, they started photographing employees.
The IBMers were coming in two groups of 250 and they were technically on vacation so we didn’t want to keep them any longer than we had to. Alisha worked with IBM to schedule everyone in slots that worked with their vacation schedule. We had 30 minutes to photograph each person, with a few different looks per person. They would come in, be photographed and then talk to a copywriter who interviewed them about their achievements.
With a revolving door of IBM employees, the shoot was hectic and involved long days, but Alisha and Jillian worked in conjunction to make sure it went as smoothly as possible.
It was amazing meeting people from all over the world. Off the top of my head, some of the countries represented were Japan, Korea, Brazil, Mexico, France, USA, England, Australia, and I know I’m forgetting some.
Everyone at IBM has been thrilled with the outcome of the images. They are now displayed on large digital walls in the IBM headquarters in NYC, but may be rolled out to international offices as well!
Credits:
1st Assistant: Matt Ramey
Gaffer: Josh Barker
See more of Jillian at jillianclarkphoto.com!