What Does It Take to Photograph a Celebrity? | Portraits with Amy Grant in Grand Rapids
Do you have celebrities you hope to meet someday? I’ve been blessed to meet some amazing celebrities in the past and one lucky Grand Rapids family was able to meet TWO of their favorite celebrities, Amy Grant and Michael W. Smith.
We were tasked by the sponsor of the shoot, local radio station WCSG, to design and build a “Christmas themed set” that could be setup and taken down in Van Andel Arena’s loading dock for the shoot. We were told we would have “at most” 10 minutes with Amy and Michael and had to make sure we captured iconic images for the winning family.
So the pressure was on: a loading dock location, build a set that looks and photographs great, a family of four, two celebrities with less than 10 minutes of time for photos and a concert to follow.
No problem for us! We called in the best to help make it all happen!
If you’re a fan of video, you can see it all here in just about a minute. If you’d like all the insight on what it’s like to create a shoot for celebrities like Michael and Amy, keep reading.
The design was done by Keri and Jamie from Special Occasions, a linen and event design company in Grand Rapids.
After the idea was pitched to me by WCSG, I knew Special Occasions would make my set design life easy and they not only delivered, they knocked the set out of the park.
The set included a main love seat, custom linen backdrop, hand crafted garland that included Michigan apples as well as trees with apples and “Pure Michigan” touches throughout the design.
Following the set creation, the winning family arrived at the scheduled time ready for their photo shoot.
WCSG wanted to offer family photos prior to the shoot with Amy and Michael. It turned out that it had been a while since the Bettig family had their photo taken by a professional photographer.
In fact, outside of family selfies, they said it had been at least 15 years since they’d had their photo taken.
I think it was just the right occasion to capture their family together, just prior to them meeting two of their biggest music heroes.
Then it was time to meet and have their photos taken with Amy and Michael.
“Oh, here they come…” were my words to begin the process and with our less than 10 minute window we were glad to capture great meet and greet images for the family.
With just about 3 minutes for “formal” photos, I planned on two setups for the shoot, one with Amy and Michael seated and then a second with everyone standing together.
With lighting ready to go and just a few frames taken from each setup, the smiles are genuine and everyone looks comfortable and confident.
Oh yeah, then there was a concert for 8500+ people at Van Andel Arena sponsored by WCSG.
Michael and Amy played their greatest Christmas hits to a sell out crowd and guests walked away excited for the upcoming Christmas holiday.
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