Wonderful Machine’s portfolio events started strong in 2019 with visits to Prudential, McCann Health, and Avis Budget Group. Since these are all agencies and brands, our Executive Producer Craig came with us to talk about shoot production.
Prudential is an insurance and finance agency based in Newark, NJ. We hit a ton of traffic on the way to Newark, so we ended up being a little late, but luckily everyone understood. (It probably helped that we brought a dozen fancy donuts from Philly’s finest, Federal Donuts.)
We have worked with Prudential before, but there were several new faces. So, we took this as an opportunity to reintroduce ourselves. There were several creatives in this meeting, making it difficult to catch all of the comments, but I did overhear many positive remarks about Fernando Decillis’ work and the quality of his actual portfolio. They loved the leather binding and the heavyweight, semi-gloss pages. In addition to Fernando Decillis, I heard great feedback about Colin M. Lenton, Greg Miller, Lisa Tichané, and Steve and Anne Truppe of Trü Studios.
The next two appointments were both in Parsippany, NJ. In fact, they were in the same office park! This was a nice change of pace since we’re so used to running from place to place. It also allowed us to spend more time at our second meeting with McCann Health.
McCann Health is an ad agency that specializes in the healthcare industry. The type of photography they need varies from job to job, but we figured a safe bet for them would be lifestyle, conceptual, and portraiture. To that end, we brought photographers like John Kuczala, William Geddes, and Colin M. Lenton.
Of all the photographers we brought, I think John Fulton made the greatest impression. McCann Health, as it turns out, often works with CGI retouchers to produce computer-generated images. This is perfect for John, who is not only a talented photographer, but an incredible CGI artist. In addition to John Fulton, the producers at McCann Health were impressed by the work of Wolfram Schroll, and Vance Jacobs.
Our third and final meeting of the day was with the marketing and art directors at Avis Budget Group. Knowing that Avis Budget is a car rental company, I made sure to load our suitcase with lots of great work from automobile photographers like Clint Davis, Darren Woolway, and Nick Nacca. But at the end of the day, there wasn’t enough time to show any of the books we brought. However, we were able to tell them about our production capabilities and hear about their photography-sourcing needs. As it turns out, they hope to incorporate more lifestyle and people into their photographs. We can’t say much, but there may be some interesting opportunities for our photographers in the future.
This was our first round of meetings in January, but certainly not our last. This year we are doubling down on portfolio events and planning more trips to see great agencies, brands, and publication.
If you’re interested in having your portfolio included in our portfolio events, feel free to reach out! We’d love to take your book with us.