At Source - Mountain View
Corporate photography and landscape photography? That doesn’t to fit. Or does it?
Recently I heard a very interesting saying:
What does the mind and a parachute have in common? – They only work when they are open.
When you hear the words corporate photography, you wouldn’t expect that I would drive out to a village with a population of 2000 to 5000 people with sketchy cellphone reception to photograph a business. It is not the typical image of corporate South Africa.
It is an interesting image after all. Handri Conradi, started At Source – Handmade Food in 2002. It is all about fruit, more specifically dried fruit. His family has been in the farming industry for 6 generations. Recently he launched his own dried fruit brand called Cecilia’s World.
Handri Conradi
Drying fruit
Last year, I was approached to photograph the business. It was one of those assignments, where I thought that this can’t be true. The brief detailed that I had to photograph the staff, the production, landscapes and the farm in general. I don’t often receive this kind of diverse shoots that include a lot of areas of photography that I simply love. Prince Alfred Hamlet, where the farm is located is a few kilometers away from Ceres, a 1.5 hour drive from Cape Town. The environment is beautiful.
I have been out there a couple of times now and every time, I discovered something new. Over the months, I have seen the process from growing the fruit to harvesting, drying and packaging. A lot of work goes into every single piece of dried fruit.
Harvesting the fruit
One aspect of my work included landscape photography, which is not a very common request from corporate clients. I also photographed more typical corporate settings. Well, they often had a twist. The group shot of the management team was an outdoor shot on the farm in front of wooden bins in the late afternoon. A farm worker arranged the bins with the help of a fork-lift for us. Finding an photographical appealing arrangement for wooden bins and managers was fun and included some amused looks by the fork-lift driver.
The management team
For the morning after this shoot, we planned to photograph the complete manufacturing staff at the main office. The shoot included about 200 people. You don’t do a group shoot of this size without location scouting. So, we did in the evening and found the perfect spot outside the manufacturing halls. Perfect.
The next morning, clouds were hanging low and promised rain. They fulfilled the promise. At the time, we set for the group shoot, it was raining. There was not a chance that we would be able to do the photograph outdoors. We needed to find an alternative, quickly.
Group shot
We walked through the factory and found the ideal location in the cold storage room. If my memory serves me right, this room’s temperature is kept at about 0° C. This room is not only cold, but also relatively dark. It is not every day the case that a photographer from Cape Town decides to use it for a corporate group shoot. What a nice challenge. For one, I had to be fast. For two, I had to light this room with the flashlights I carried with me. Luckily, the crates allowed installation of the lights at a decent height without major problems. After that, I just had to work fast and convince the staff members to go into the cold and even smile.
Everyone was a good sport and very surprisingly left the set very quickly after a I shot the last frame.
There are some more aspects to this assignment that I will share in an upcoming post. Visit At Source – Handmade Food and Cecilia’s World to view more of my images and learn a bit more about the company. For more example of my work, visit my corporate photography portfolio.
Fantastic post Jürgen! And what a diverse brief for a corporate shoot.
Thank you Drikus. The diversity of this assignment is simply amazing and a great client to work for and with.
Hi Jurgen,
Glad you enjoy these assignments. There is more where this came from. Looking forward to our next shoot.
Handri
Thanks Handri,
I always enjoy coming out to the farm and live the atmosphere.
What a great assignment!
Visited both sites to view the images. They are really great and make the site look very appealing! What an interesting company too. Managers and groups images were creative and ingenious. Great work all the images!
Enjoyed reading your posting and viewing the images. Thanks for sharing.
Wish you and your family a great day.
Thank you Marisol to take the time to visit the post and also my client’s websites. Thanks for the compliments
Corporate photography has so many fascinating facets to it. I really enjoy that.
I hope you are doing well.