Reflections on a healthcare advertising shoot

Patient photoshoots can make an art director’s day

Recently, I was on set twice in one day photographing patients for a maternity campaign and an oncology campaign. Both shots featured a mother and daughter, and the stories focus on the mother’s perspective. Now, I’ve been art directing photoshoots for health care marketing for years, but these two shoots, so close together struck a chord.

The morning shoot for maternity was with a young mom and her beautiful, healthy, bright 11-week-old little girl. We had so much fun playing with the baby. Mom was looking great and filled with joy and happiness, anticipating all the goodness of life to be lived.

The second shoot was a mom and her 10-year-old daughter. The young girl had been diagnosed with bone cancer in her leg. Luckily the cancer had not spread; the section of bone was cut out, and a very difficult bone graft was screwed into place. Not only is this 10-year-old cancer free, but her leg was saved from amputation. She is beautiful, bright and her life is filled with doing what young girls do, plus lots of appointments with the medical community. Mom is looking great, so proud of her daughter, and filled with happiness, and anticipating that life is going to work out as originally planned.

It was a good day doing what I do.