Cover Shoot with Wayne Muir

The all important cover: magazine, CD or DVD cover, website homepage center image, or Facebook Time Line photograph. This is prime real estate for each of these publications or media. It’s what’s looked at first and thus needs to be a killer image. One of those “eye-catching” “gasp factor” photographs designed to draw the viewer in, keep their attention and keep them reading, buying, etc.

Wayne Muir, February Cover Guy.

I met Wayne several years ago, photographed a fabulous surprise birthday party he arranged for his wife. You should have seen the look on her face when she entered the room, saw her friends and family from around the country. That made a great picture.

This fun party shoot led to another, as I was hired again, setting up my portable studio at his office to photograph the entire staff.

What a pleasant surprise to be contacted a third time for this magazine cover assignment. It proves the point I’ve made for years – people do business with people they like and whose work they respect. Wayne’s firm, Structural Consultants Inc gets that respect from me. They’ve been in business since the mid 70’s, taking good care of clients.

Congrats Wayne on your cover story in Structural Engineer magazine.

I used my Dyna-Lite studio strobes, bringing them, white muslin backdrop, and lots of accessories to the SCI office. These studio lights are bulkier, take more time to set-up, require AC power, but have 250 watt modeling lights making it easy to see how my subject will be lit. I used a large 5×4′ softbox for the full length portrait session, and aimed 2 additional flash heads at the background. A large piece of foam core at camera right fills in the shadow side.

My 2nd choice for the cover image, trumped by the coat over the shoulder image above.

We took several formal images with suit coat on, but the minute Wayne tossed his jacket over the shoulder and picked up the hard hat I knew we had the cover image in the bag. Glad the editors agreed!!