Sometimes you arrive for a company photo shoot on exactly the wrong day.
When owner Dean Brady invited me to GranitePro in Eldersburg, Maryland, the plan was fairly simple: create updated headshots of the team and a great group portrait.
When I arrived, one of GranitePro’s major fabrication machines had gone down.
For a company that fabricates its countertops in-house, that’s not exactly a minor inconvenience. Dean was dealing with the very real possibility of production falling behind while simultaneously trying to gather his team together for photo day.
Not exactly ideal timing.
GranitePro fabricates its countertops in-house, so having a major piece of equipment offline wasn’t a minor inconvenience. Dean was dealing with the very real possibility of production falling behind while simultaneously trying to gather his team together for photo day.
And yet, somehow, we made it work.
Headshots in a Pretty Incredible Showroom
We started with individual portraits inside GranitePro’s showroom—which, from a photographer’s perspective, was basically one beautiful backdrop after another.
Kitchen displays, cabinetry, countertops, gorgeous finishes and little pockets of light gave us plenty to work with. Instead of bringing everyone in front of one generic background, we could use the environment itself to create professional portraits that actually felt connected to the business.
That’s one of my favorite ways to approach staff photography.
Your workplace can often tell part of the story for us.
And GranitePro’s showroom made that particularly easy.
While Dean continued juggling the considerably more pressing issue happening behind the scenes, we worked our way through the team and got everyone’s portraits finished.
From the Showroom to the Fabrication Shop
Then we headed into the part of GranitePro customers don’t necessarily get to see: the fabrication facility.
GranitePro cuts and finishes its stone in-house at its Eldersburg location using some seriously impressive equipment, including a BACA CNC waterjet cutting system and a Northwood CNC router system for edge polishing.
This is where the beautiful slabs and samples customers see in the showroom actually become countertops.
And it made a fantastic setting for the team photograph.
Instead of creating the group portrait in front of another pretty kitchen display, we finished with a team portrait on the fabrication floor, surrounded by some of the serious equipment GranitePro uses to cut and finish stone.
I love the contrast between the two sets of images.
The showroom portraits show the polished, customer-facing side of GranitePro.
The team photograph shows where the work actually happens.
Together, they tell a much more complete story about the company.
Sometimes Photo Day Just Has to Keep Moving
One of the realities of photographing businesses is that more often than note, business doesn’t stop operating because I showed up with a camera.
Phones ring. Customers need things. Employees get pulled away.
And sometimes a very expensive piece of machinery decides that today is the day it’s going to stop cooperating.
That’s okay.
Part of my job as a commercial photographer is working around the reality of an operating business rather than expecting the business to work around me.
Despite everything Dean had on his plate that day, he and the GranitePro team were gracious, accommodating, and willing to carve out the time we needed to create their new photographs.
And we got them.
A complete set of updated staff portraits, photographed among the beautiful kitchen displays their customers know—and a team portrait created right where so much of their work happens.
Not bad for a photo day that started with one of the machines going down.
Thanks, Dean and team, for rolling with it!
