If you are a faithful reader of our project journals, you might have noticed that a lot of our projects recently have been corporate portraits and that is by design. Winter is a great time to update a headshots and collaboration photography but during these cold months is also a great time to shoot product photography. Product photography is something Lesle has done her entire career and she simply loves doing it!
IMMI is a safety systems manufacturer founded in 1961 under the name Indiana Mills and Manufacturing. Their corporate headquarters is in Westfield to this day, and they have expanded to five additional sites around the globe. IMMI creates safety systems for school busses, military vehicles, commercial trucks, and so much more and we had the privilege to see the inner workings of safety while working on this project.
Before Studio13 even existed, Lesle’s parents shot for IMMI under the business McGuire Studio. Lesle has had the privilege of working off and on for IMMI during her career but this job was extra special for us, because we got to reconnect with Robbyn Kizer and Julie Cooley. Robbyn worked with us on our last shoot with IMMI and we have worked with Julie for years at her previous jobs with Easy Water and WISH TV. Julie is now the director of marketing and corporate communications for IMMI.
IMMI decided to undertake a massive overhaul on their website—including an updated image library of many of the products that they make. This included plain products on white, products with people using them, and engineering levels of details to show the efficacy of these safety systems. This was no small project, but we knew that organization was key to this running smoothly.
Since this shoot required showing products in use, we needed a space that could fit ambulance and combat vehicle seats as well an entire ATV in it. We don’t have a door that big! Luckily, IMMI has a large conference center with expandable doors for easy driving of the ATV onto the set. We decided in preproduction that it would be best for us to run two sets; while one was being shot, the other could be cleared and prepared for the next shot.
We were eternally grateful for the hard work of Robbyn and Marissa Cotton in carefully planning and organizing all the product for this shoot. They cataloged all their needs, laid out a game plan for what product goes next and how many shots were needed for each product. This allowed Lesle and the rest of the team to focus on keeping lighting and angles consistent and made this shoot a well-oiled machine.
It might take a village to raise a child, but it takes just as many to make a large-scale shoot go right. Although we summarized this in a single blog, this shoot lasted multiple days, included over 75 products and 194 shots. We did our best to push ourselves past the the client’s expectations for number of shots provided while keeping a close eye on quality. So glad to see that business relationships are strong going through multiple name changes and years of evolving business!
