Commercial Medical Healthcare Photography | Veterinarian Doctors and their Pets
Commercial Medical Healthcare Photography
Doctors and their Pets | Commercial Photography for Southern California Veterinarians Specialty Hospital, Irvine: Last week the Texas firm of Young Concepts commissioned me for a two day commercial photography shoot in Irvine at Southern California Veterinarians Specialty Hospital. The shoot covered portraits / headshots of all the doctors and their pets plus commercial photography of the veterinarian medical healthcare. Its funny how things work sometimes. I have some forty inch canvases of my Blueyedawg pet photography hanging in Newport Harbor Animal Hospital in Costa Mesa. One of their pet owners, who is in the printing business, thought highly enough of my work to refer me to Young Concept’s, Keela Young who was searching for a local photographer to work on a project with her. Keela and I discussed the project at length and both decided it would be a great fit. Just goes to show you, you never know where your next referral will come from.
Without a doubt the shoot was challenging and very rewarding. Having Keela and her creative director Kiki on a shoot like this was invaluable. As a photographer on a location shoot like this you have to pull from your total arsenal of skills: People skills, comedic skills, lighting skills, chit-chat during portrait sessions skills, dog and cat wrangling skills, stealthy and unobtrusive camera tactics and off camera speedlight tricks. There are a total of twenty docs on staff and they were only all going to be there on a single Tuesday and we needed to nail all those portraits on a single day plus include: real time photography of rehabilitation, X-rays, MRI’s , cardiograms, a Fluoroscopy procedure, spinal tap, acute care and surgical procedures over the two days on site.
Headshots / Portraits are lit with a 3’x4′ Chimera soft box {top} angled down at 45 degrees and a strip light {with a neutral density filter to cut down one f-stop of output} angled up at 45 degrees: classic Clam Shell lighting. Very flattering for men of women of a certain age. At times a piece of white foam care was used for fill. ProFoto compact heads coupled with Pocket Wizard III’s worked flawlessly. Great gear, great results. Vignettes, courtesy of Adobe Lightroom 5. Occasionally when we had a black dog, we’d use a speedlight inside a Bruce Dorn asymmetrical strip box for an extra kick. Black fur is a Stephen Hawking’s Black Hole for light. It just swallows it up. So we’d need to pop in from 1.5-2 stops more of light on the doggie.
Turns out Southern California Veterinarians Specialty Hospital is point eight miles from my Irvine photography studio. SCVSH is housed in rather unremarkable building. However, the services and care the staff, techs and veterinarians provide is nothing short of remarkable. Its one of two pet trauma centers in Southern California. They are open during regular business hours and 24 hours for pet emergencies.
Their facilities and pet medical technology are state of the art. There are numerous surgeons, veterinarians, cardiologists, oncologists, optometrists, one the foremost neurosurgeons in the world and a battalion of veterinary technicians on staff daily. Their facility includes an MRI machine, 8 surgical suites, and oncology department, an X-ray room, a fluoroscopy area, a sealed oxygen tank {Sadly the dog that was being treated didn’t make it.} a rehabilitation department and a large medical pet intake area.
During my two days of commercial medical healthcare photography, I witnessed a microscopic ophthalmology surgery, a cat undergoing a spinal tap, numerous dog surgeries repairing knees and tendons and an oncology treatment of a King Charles Cocker Spaniel, an acupuncture treatment on a large German Shepard guard dog and what the doctors dubbed a “miracle,” Doberman Pincher that had been run over by two cars, had spinal surgery and both rear legs repaired that was exercising {semi-weightlessly} in a water tank to help him rehabilitate.
