A Full Magazine Feature in One Day
Women's Health wanted their own editors in the 2019 winter challenge feature, each of them trying out a sport outside their usual routine. We photographed the entire team across Cape Town in a single day, most of them used to being behind the camera.
One day, one team, several Cape Town locations
For their 2019 winter challenge, Women's Health Magazine wanted to put their own editors in the feature, each one trying a sport outside their usual routine. That meant photographing the whole editorial team, in their chosen activities, at several locations around Cape Town, and doing it all in a single day. It was editorial photography in Cape Town with a logistics puzzle attached: many people, many places, one day, one shot at each.
- A whole editorial team to photograph, not one or two models
- Several Cape Town locations to cover in a single day
- Editors far more used to being behind the camera than in front of it
Editors who had never been in front of a camera
The quiet challenge was the subjects. Magazine editors spend their careers on the other side of the lens; putting them in front of it, mid-sport, is a different thing entirely. Part of the job was simply making them comfortable enough to look natural, quickly, because there was no time to coax a relaxed frame out of anyone. Confidence reads on camera far more than technique does, and a real moment beats a posed one, and is faster anyway. Comfort is the whole job here, and it has to happen in minutes.
The plan that made the day work
A one-day, multi-location shoot lives or dies on the plan. ThinkStory mapped the route between locations, the light at each, and the order of shoots so the day flowed without backtracking across Cape Town. Every stop had a plan before we arrived: what we were shooting, where, and how long we had. Losing an hour to traffic or bad light would have cost a location outright, so the schedule did the heavy lifting and the shoot itself stayed loose. In a print feature, one weak location can sink the whole spread.
The winter challenge feature
It all came together as the 2019 winter challenge feature: the team, each in their chosen activity, shot across the city in a day. Getting it done under that pressure built a stronger relationship with Media24 and showed we could handle a big, moving job without dropping the standard. The pictures looked considered, not rushed, which is the only measure that matters in print. Trust like that is earned on days exactly like this one.
How we run editorial shoots
Planning a one-day, multi-location photo shoot comes down to preparation: know the route, the light and the order before the day starts, so the day itself is about people, not logistics. That is how we ran the Women's Health shoot, and how we run editorial shoots generally, a tight plan underneath so the shoot on top can breathe. The best editorial shoots feel effortless because the effort happened the week before. Preparation is the invisible half of every good shoot. You cannot reshoot a magazine feature, so the day had to land first time.
Common questions.
How do you plan a one-day, multi-location photo shoot?
With preparation. Know the route between locations, the light at each, and the order of shoots before the day starts. For Women's Health we mapped all of it across Cape Town so the team could be photographed in one day without backtracking.
How do you photograph people who are not models?
Make them comfortable enough to look natural, fast. Women's Health editors spend their careers behind the camera, so much of the job was putting them at ease mid-sport so a real, unposed moment could happen quickly.
What makes a good editorial shoot run smoothly?
A tight plan underneath a loose shoot. For the Women's Health winter challenge feature the schedule did the heavy lifting, so the day itself could be about the people rather than the logistics.
