Photoshoots are Fun! (and Hard)

Being an intern at a small business has its perks! I’m Taja Davis, and I am a marketing intern at In Bliss Weddings– a growing wedding website run out of Philadelphia. This semester, I took part in assisting at a photo shoot for the website’s third online publication. The theme is “Clearly in Love” this time around. The ideas for the magazine’s visual are all based off of goddesses.

The University of Penn’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology was the perfect place to go to take the scene back in time. So, at 6:15 am the editors, the two other interns selected, and I met at the office and packed the cars we had with supplies for the shoot. We headed to the museum and once there, we got right to setting up the scenes. The largest set was the Lower Egypt room, where we placed plants, lights, gems, fabrics, and candles everywhere.
I’ve never seen a photo shoot take place (beside the usual smartphone photo shoots me and my friends have), and being there showed me how hard it really is for the models, photographer, and the staff on hand. As we know, photo shoots are an extremely common occurrence for advertisers when making the creative process happen. Being at the museum and helping with the sets helped me to envision just a taste of what it would be like to work on shoots for ads.
My dream job would be to do fashion advertising. It was a wonderful experience to be a part of every aspect of the process. Lighting is so important, and I did not realize this until seeing it done. The way it bounces off of certain gems and glass can make or break a photo. Every single piece had to be in place to ensure that the perfect shot would be available for their online magazine spread, especially the cover. This mirrored advertising—where the perfect shot of your product can make or break the message you are trying to send to a consumer.