Things and ideas

Last week Karl and I had a photo shoot for the West Coast Bank annual report. We had three customer profiles to shoot and two shots of each. Karl and I traveled down to Salem to shoot at Pratum Co-op first. Troy Kuenzi, General Manager, was great to work with and gave Karl free rein and full access. Which he took advantage of. Climbing all the way up to the top of the tower and anywhere else he could get to find the right angle. 

They also had the coolest robotic lawn mower I've ever seen. Troy joked with us that even though their company sells grass seed and fertilizer, they can never get anyone to mow the lawns. This baby mows and charges itself. I want one!

Next we came back to Salem for the profile Jan and Dennis Young. Jan had her portrait taken while she was volunteering at Liberty Grade School where she is involved in helping first and second graders learn how to read. She was simply magic with the kids. She really inspired me to look into volunteering with a reading program myself. Then we shot Dennis at the Marion-Polk County Food Share. Everyone was so nice and accomodating while still working around us like busy bees. 

The last shoot was in Canby at Wilson Construction. They do amazing electrical construction and maintenance, along with drilling, wind energy and lots of other very cool stuff. Even cooler they do quite a lot of it FROM A HELICOPTER. That's right, really cool. As you can imagine there was plenty of neat stuff around to take photos of. The first part was in their yard and office. Again, they let Karl go wherever he wanted, so he did.

The last half was in their hangar. There were two fixed wing airplanes and two helicopters in at the time. They have a fleet of six helicopters and another plane, but most were out working. We were there to set up a shot for the President, Don Wilson. Tony and Juan helped get us set up by moving the helicopter right to where we needed it and found us plugs and extension cords. The other half of the hangar had some really cool old airplanes in it. Don flew in from California, landed outside the hangar and then graciously posed for his portrait after a very long day.

Three packed days of shooting yielded tons of great pictures. Hats off to Karl for being a joy to work with and totally game for anything that will make the shot better. Way to make it work!