Industrial Photographer, Los Angeles, California – manufacturing, shipping, machine shops, construction photography

Industrial photographers are often challenged with making mundane, dirty, cluttered work environments look exciting, artistic, beautiful , modern, and clean. We shoot in machine shops, manufacturing plants, on construction sites, in clean rooms, in refineries and in repair shops.  We sometimes do product photography of large machines in manufacturing environments, as the machines are too large to move to another location. I recently photographed a water cooling machine that was about 20 feet tall and 15 feet wide, and had to shoot it from above!

A typical industrial photography shoot might be like one I did recently of a water pump repair plant. The machine shop had huge lathes that were about 50 feet long, and looked 40 or 50 years old. They were dirty, greasy and covered with metal shavings and old rags. The shop manager was very proud of these huge machines, and told me that there were very few lathes that large in operation. He wanted me to make them look exciting and modern. I put purple, red and blue lights on the machine, used a wide angle lens that made them look hundreds of feet long, and took pictures that the pleased the management a great deal.

In the same plant there was an employee welding and grinding the insides of water pumps. I thought the sparks and light would make a good image, so I took several pictures that were long exposures – up to 10 seconds long, to capture lots of spark, then popped the flash at the end to stop the movement. The plant had a cage they could put on a fork lift. I got in it and they driver lifted me as high as it would go, so that I could shoot down on some of the machines. The full day shoot included images of the exterior of the plant, employees working at 6 or 7 machines, as well as the images mentioned above.

The most challenging thing I have to face in industrial shoots is when clients ask for a large area to be photographed. A manufacturer of medical equipment asked me to shoot their entire assembly area, a space about the size of four basketball courts. It had to be lit with 15 strobes, many of which were hidden behind machines. The end result looked very professional, but it took several hours to set up. I shot it with a 22 mega pixel Phase One digital back, as the pictures were for a trade show sign and had to be reproduced at about 10 feet across.

Preparing for an Industrial Photo Shoot

Send out a notice to all your employees a week in advance, and again a day in advance of the shoot. Ask them to wear clean uniforms or work clothes, and make sure that all of their safety regulation gear – hard hats, goggles, reflective vests – are clean. Management may want to get fresh haircuts or make other grooming arrangements. The entire shop should be cleaned the day before the shoot, particularly around the machines that will be photographed. Garbage cans emptied, metal filings removed, empty boxes stacked out of the way, and floors swept. The machines to be photographed should be as clean as possible, even underneath them. If the exterior of the building is to be photographed, call the landscaping crew in to mow the lawn, pull weeds and clean up the trash before the building is photographed.