Creative personal branding photos for marketing CEO in ABQ
Back out on assignment for an out of state trade magazine to make more commercial portraits and personal branding photos for an upcoming article they are writing about Del Esparza. I met Del at his downtown ABQ office which had this great brick wall, conference room, and open space to make enough photos right there. However, we finished the shoot with some high impact street portraits, one of my favorite kinds of photos to make. For all these photos I used my Sony 50mm f/1.2 GM lens that excels in both small spaces still creating shallow depth of field shots, and out in open space for more landscape portrait type shots with some out of focus background. Shooting on location like this allows me to create unique backgrounds for clients. Great job in front of the camera Del!
Downtown ABQ as a unique personal branding photo shoot location
I met T.J. outside his office building in downtown Albuquerque for a thank you personal branding photo shoot for choosing me as the photographer for a big multi-week long project photographing business founders. Downtown ABQ is one of my favorite places to shoot on location in the city, especially standing out in the middle of the street and letting the bokeh take care of the background. This type of photo makes for a unique background that I could never replicate for anyone else, as the light, shadows, and even street lights are always changing. Thank you to T.J. and Jen for choosing me for such an interesting and creative photo project!
KOB 4 local news here in Albuquerque is actually the station I watch so when someone named Ivan Cabrera texted me about headshots, I had to ask, are you the meteorologist? He was indeed! If you can believe it, Ivan was not the first local news meteorologist I photographed in downtown Albuquerque, that was Conner Lewis of KRQE back in 2020. Even though I was shooting in a similar place, Ivan’s headshots are totally unique. Using an intersection as the out of focus background, and even the Albuquerque Convention Center itself, I was able to create a variety of different headshots for Ivan all within about a 20 square foot area! Thank you Ivan for choosing me as your headshot photographer and see you at 6pm weekdays on KOB 4!
Creative Commercial Portraits Brick Wall Background in Albuquerque
Meeting client requests is what it means to be a professional commercial photographer in Albuquerque. Jason contacted me needing natural light portraits, with a brick wall background. So I began scouting locations in downtown Albuquerque that had a brick wall and would be in shade at midday to be able to shoot a natural light commercial portrait in. Having found the perfect location for the photoshoot, and done all the prep work ahead of time, and having 12 years experience as a pro, the shoot ended up taking less than 10 minutes of Jason’s time so he could get back quickly to his busy work day. That’s what it means to choose me as your commercial photographer. He also had his edited portraits delivered only 3 hours after the shoot!
Using shallow depth of field and setting your focus point
Since I started Jason Collin Photography back in 2009, I have taught hundreds of people of all levels 1-on-1 photography lessons. In the course of that teaching I repeated some favorite photography advice. Here is one of them:
“Show me something I cannot see by just standing there.”
Another one is:
“A photographer can make something out of nothing.”
In the example photos in this blog post I had my Sigma 50mm f/1.4 ART lens on my Sony a7 III full frame mirrorless camera. This lens is my favorite lens for making something out of nothing because the large f/1.4 aperture means I can easily create very shallow DoF (depth of field). Making a photo with a very shallow DoF is one of the easiest ways to make something out of nothing.
Downtown Albuquerque like you have never seen before
Part of my drone photography work for WSI Web Enhancers took me to downtown Albuquerque at sunset to get beautiful, attention grabbing drone imagery for WSI to in turn wow their own client with. Mother Nature greatly cooperated with perfect clouds and warm setting sunlight to paint the view of downtown ABQ with, and for me to send up my DJI Mavic 2 Pro drone up to capture. I was west of the downtown skyline so I could provide both a more unique view of the city (most photos show it from the east) and also to have the Sandia Mountains serve as the backdrop. I am very excited to offer 360 panorama drone photos on Jason Collin Photography for my clients!
Out on a drone photography assignment for local Albuquerque, New Mexico business WSI Web Enhancers, I launched my drone from the top of a parking garage in downtown, set the photo mode to panorama sphere, and the above is the result. As a certified drone pilot for over 2 years, I regularly share drone content on Jason Collin Photography, but this is the first time to feature a 360 panorama photo! The drone did all the shooting itself. I flew it into position, and let the drone do its thing. The big challenge for me was, how to share this 360 panorama image on my site. I did a lot of research into this and found no clear process actually. After a while I came to find that I need to upload the huge panorama image the drone stitched together for me, to a website that will host the image and format it. Basically it’s like putting video on YouTube.
