I’m currently involved with the management of Rentwise‘s branding exercise and am responsible for some writeup and photography works of their operations. That includes taking pictures and sprucing up their staff’s blog posts and quarterly newsletters which make up the many voices of Rentwise’s IT rental business. As a leading IT rental solutions company, branding and marketing is important for its continual success and growth.

The staff blog posts is part of their newly launched website feature called “Insights“, aimed to provide a rare glimpse into their staff’s sharing on what it means to be working at Rentwise and be part of a larger family. I’ve wanted to delay a post on this to much later in hopes of sharing a more comprehensive coverage of all the staffs whose pictures I’ve taken. But I thought perhaps a quick filler now will help pave the way there.

It was a quick series of four different personnel whose “corporate-flavoured” pictures I have to take over a short span of half a day! The first was Tony Ooi, the financial controller at Rentwise. They were having a training at a local club nearby, so I setup during lunch and took a quick grab at the only available decent background as follows:

It was taken at f/4.5, 1/40 sec (on a tripod) zoomed in at 70mm @ ISO 400.  I then added a 1/4 CTO key speed light umbrella to camera right, and an un-gelled bare speed light to rear camera left as a kicker. The final third light was used to rake the red backdrop for some separation. Here’s the final result.

The very same setup above was also quickly used for the second guy, Timothy, the assistant sales manager from Singapore.

I moved over to a different backdrop for something a little different before wrapping up at this location.

I then made a quick dash over to Rentwise’s HQ and setup for some shots of the third guy, Bernad who was responsible for Production at the warehouse. Here’s a quick ambient grab of Bernad’s working desk at f/4.5, 1/80 sec @ ISO 400.

I added my first key speed light high to camera left aiming downwards to see how it pans out.

I realised it was a little too cool. The rear-end of the desk at camera right looked a little cluttered and receded into the background. I then decided to 1/2 CTO my key light and added my second bare speed light (gelled in green) hidden behind the desk to camera right. This light was bounced off a nearby wall to soften the blow and provide me indirect green ambient kick back. You can see this green splash on Bernad’s left face edge (camera right).

Now, there’s separation between this desk and the wall behind it. I proceeded to add my final and third speed light gelled in green just right behind his head on the desktop shelf for separation between his head and the wall behind. In hindsight, I could have better positioned this light a little leftwards but I was madly rushing for completion; so this will have to do.

I also took a closed-up portrait of Bernad before tearing down and setting up for the fourth and final person to shoot; Nurul. This session also took place at Rentwise’s warehouse at Shah Alam.

Here’s an ambient grab after a quick scan of the warehouse, with Nurul seated down on some wooden storage pallets.

A bare head speed light gelled in green was firing into the shelves at the rear from far camera right to provide me a general base upon which to work. A second similar light firing in the same position was used to outline Nurul’s body edge to tie her back into her surrounding. A third and final 1/2 CTO key light was then used to light her face from high camera left.

With the above main shot bagged, I quickly moved elsewhere for some alternative shots. Basically, I wanted to paint the ambient green and warmly key light her face. For these shots below, I placed a bare head speed light gelled in green just right above her waist behind her to throw light into the opposite direction, thus painting the entire room green! It was a quick convenient fix with her torso blocking the light stand.

I finished just in time for these staffs to clock out and leave after a long and tiring day at work. A quick check with my watch revealed that I took no more than an hour (about 45 minutes) to location scout, setup and photograph 2 individuals at the same location with minor variations in place, all under pressure in completing fast. That was pretty quick!