By Paul McGowan From PS Audio

One of the more delightful aspects of my job is when we get to travel to a cool place to shoot lifestyle photos of our products.

It’s a full day working with the photographers who obsess over lighting, positioning, and structure of their art. 

On a recent photoshoot, Terri, me, speaker engineer Chris Brunhaver, and mechanical engineer Chester Roe journeyed out to a home in Arvada, Colorado. This home is cool and selected from a website that is somewhat like VRBO, only you rent out the home for hours at a time and you don’t sleep there.

Our photographers, Brayden and Shane, have a very structured routine. Nothing happens until first the tunes are setup. Shane brings his Marshall Boombox and cranks it up. Then it’s unloading. They spend the first hour of a shoot hauling out lighting equipment and all manner of tripods and reflectors. Once out of the trailer the fun begins.

We select the room and Breyden starts structuring his fingers into that classic movie director’s frame as he decides how to make the shot welcoming and inviting. Have a look at this photo of the FR10.

Looks right. Right? That shot took 3 hours to set up. The doors had to be at exactly the right angle that beckons you in. The couch to the left had to be moved from the living room into this room and adjusted with the precision of a set director. The plant just below the window? That took half an hour to get it right. The guitar case was endlessly moved around until perfect. And once everything is in place comes the lighting. Huge strobes outside the house shoot those highlights into the picture and are manually adjust by Shane at the direction of Brayden. The two wear walkie talkies and are constantly moving things in fractions of inches.

Nothing is left to chance.

Maybe it’s just me, but watching an artist craft their masterpieces reminds me of how we in engineering also obsess over the tiniest of details to get the products to sound the way they do.

Art is what touches your soul regardless of the venue.

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