on the job: villanova school of business
A few years ago I started partnering with the Villanova School of Business on their portrait and marketing photography. I love working on new campuses and this was especially exciting because I was already familiar with the school itself. If you’re a sports fan at all then you’ve probably at least heard of Villanova’s basketball team before. Or, if you’re like me, you grew up and went to school not too far from the Main Line campus. I have been lucky to be back quite a bit since we first started working together in 2021. VSB is always a great collaboration in my mind because they always give me the time and the space to make images we can be really proud of. We work on a variety of photography together — sometimes it’s events, sometimes it’s portraits. Sometimes it’s a mix of the two, or something totally different. VSB really understands how to balance our working relationship between their photographic needs and the point of view and creativity I can bring to their projects.
Recently, we collaborated on a portrait campaign to support the Clay Center, the student support center within VSB. According to their website, “From the moment an undergraduate student walks on campus and until they graduate, the Clay Center supports their academic, personal and professional growth as an undergraduate.”
The Clay Center wanted to create large format prints of their students to hang in their office, and in order to make the pieces more inviting to students we decided to create casual, active portraits of the selected students. The portraits would be designed with some text on them, printed, and hung around the halls of the business school. The approach was simple: I would come to campus for a day of portraits with students. But instead of the typical buttoned-up business headshots most people are accustomed to, our goal was to be more off-the-cuff. In order to pull that off, we treated the session more like a conversation than a portrait session. I talked with the students about their studies and passions, post grad plans, and families as I captured the images. With their bodies in motion, and their minds focused on some of their most inspiring projects, we were able to get images of them that are relaxed and genuine.
The end results are pretty great, in my opinion. If you’re looking for something similar, drop me a line!
