Part of my photography business is helping clients create images for their websites.  I recently did a project for Patricia Phelan, an attorney who concentrates in special education law and advocacy.  Her web designer had given us specific images to create for the website. The first one, above, was Patti having a conference with a client family.

The second image, to the left, was Patti sitting at her desk, talking on the phone with a client. The lighting for this one was fairly tricky. We turned off the fluorescent office lights (which tend to make people look green) . It was a gloomy day, and thus very little window light was available to light the image. So, we had to light the scene from scratch. I used three strobe lights, which had to be set up to be invisible in the shot, but also not bounce reflections off the diplomas, the computer screen or Patti’s glasses. This took a bit of trial and error.

Then, we shot Patti with her own family, in an atrium with lovely plants on the ground floor of her office building.  The clients who hire Patti are not just looking for an attorney; they are looking for someone who is compassionate and understanding of the issues around special needs children – and Patti Phelan has these qualities in spades.

 With these pictures, we are trying to show a bit of Patti’s personality, so that potential clients will feel comfortable approaching her for representation. 

Once the website is up and running, I’ll put a link to it on this blog. For me, this was a special and fun project, in part because Patti is a dear friend. If you, gentle reader, are thinking about photography for your website, please keep me in mind! Here’s one last image from our shoot, a headshot with a bit more of a formal feel than the other images.