What are the challenges when photographing technology at Versum Materials, a facility with clean rooms, research labs and chemicals? First, we must comply with OSHA’s safety rules which is standard in most manufacturing plants like Intel, Microchip and AT&T, which means we must wear the safety gear which restricts our movement. The glasses can restrict your vision when using the camera’s viewfinder. My assistant and I also wore orange vests in the warehouse so we would not get run over by a forklift; all of this is a normal part of the OSHA safety standards.
The second thing is Versum Materials’ plant in Tempe, Arizona is full of complex machinery and high-tech equipment. Combine that with safety stations and caution signs and it can make for some busy backgrounds. Our job is to make a simple, clean composition by removing distracting objects from the scene and choosing the right lens and camera angle. Luckily I did not have to operate their complex equipment, just photograph it, but they do some awesome things like polishing wafers or magnifying the surface of a wafer, right down to the atoms!
We had about 40 topics to photograph. 50 – 60 photos would be adequate for brochures and web site. We produced 250 photos to satisfy the needs of media-hungry social media.
We may use color or repeating shapes in a composition to hold the eye of the viewer.
See more photos of people in the work-place here.