I do a lot of work with law firms in the Houston, Texas area, photographing everything from headshots to portraits to social media content to ads and more. In particular, I work a lot with personal injury lawyers and firms to help document when they've won a major victory for one of their clients, and this shoot was no exception. There's just something about capturing killer legal portraits that I really enjoy and lawyers have quickly become one of my favorite subjects to photograph.
Jonathan Sneed is an associate attorney at Abraham Watkins here in Houston and someone who I have worked with in the past, but Jonathan's sister, Shannon Pennock, is ALSO an attorney who is based out of New Jersey with her firm Pennock Law Firm. Two siblings, both lawyers, but on completely different ends of the country.
Jonathan and Shannon finally had the chance to work on a case together where they eventually won a $32M judgement for their client against Hilton and The Moinian Group (give the article a quick read, they had to hire a private investigator to track down a former Hilton engineer who ended up playing a pivotal role in winning their case. Wild stuff!)
We headed into downtown Houston to scout a spot at the Abraham Watkins offices to shoot our portraits. AW is housed in this gorgeous historic building with some really distinct brick and wood elements, and Jonathan's office in particular has some giant floor-to-ceiling windows on one side that I thought would let some really great natural light flood the room.
My trusty assistant Danielle stood in for the clients so we could get a sense of framing and background. I liked some elements of the angle with the desk (and we even cleaned the entire thing off, just in case) but ultimately felt like it was too busy and focused on the sofa as our primary shot, while having the desk in our back pocket in case we ended up needing it.
Jonathan and Shannon came in, and we quickly knocked out individuals of them before moving on to a paired photo. Danielle had an XPLOR 300 Pro on a boom arm with small white Buff PLM + diffusion to give a little extra pop to the subject. I also shot some of everything with natural light as well just in case, but ultimately preferred the files with the strobe included.
A shot several framings of each of them; wide to give more of a sense of space in the room, and then tighter for a more traditional portrait framing. Shannon's blue dress really popped with the warm tones of the room filled with the early-evening sun.
Finally, we had brother and sister share the space for a group shot and, once again, shot options both with all natural light and then with some fill from the PLM.
