From Adventure to the ER

Tuesday June 28th, 2011

As a landscape and adventure photographer, Bret Edge rarely shoots buildings, so when he got a call on a Monday afternoon asking if he was available to shoot a new hospital, he was intrigued. The project, from Hogan Construction, became even more interesting when they stated they needed the photos by Wednesday—yes, that Wednesday. That would give Bret just about 30 hours to coordinate, shoot, process and upload the high-res files to the client. The job became even trickier when Bret found out that hospital was open for business, meaning he would have to do interior shots while working around doctors, staff, and patients.

Being one who enjoys a good challenge, Bret accepted the job. He immediately got to work arranging the shoot and was lucky enough to wrangle an early morning start time, before the hospital got too busy. Knowing he wouldn’t be able to set up elaborate lighting, Bret decided to rely oh high dynamic range software to combine multiple exposures for most of the interior shots.

Bret told me about the day of the shoot,

I was given full access to all areas of the hospital.  After a walk-through of the entire building I chose several areas that best exemplified the craftsmanship of the construction company. I worked quickly and as unobtrusively as possible to minimize disruption to their daily business. The employees were awesome and even chuckled about having to hide behind pillars and desks!

After successfully finishing up indoors, Bret moved outside, where of course, it started raining. Forced to take cover in his car until the rain let up, Bret knew he would have to be even quicker about getting the photos. On top of the rain, he also had to maneuver around cars and ambulances, making the shots even trickier.

After the shoot, Bret headed back to his office to get started on editing. In the end, he was able to edit and upload the high-res files by 6:00 PM on Tuesday, to the client’s delight. Both he and the client were happy with the photos. Bret also has some advice for photographers faced with a challenging or atypical project, “Take a chance sometime. You might just like the effect it has on your creativity!”

- Maria