Always Be Connecting // THOM Magazine

Always Be Connecting // THOM Magazine

THOM Magazine assigned us to photograph a feature on Domi Station for their Fall/Winter 2017 issue. The story, written by Rob Rushin, profiled the business incubator and its leadership team, and the assignment brought us to the Domi Station space in Tallahassee to capture portraits of Executive Director Lucas Lindsey, Director of Community Sabrina Torres, and Director of Programs Dominick Ard, along with images of the co-working environment itself.

Domi Station operates out of a trackside brick building, and spaces like that are interesting to work in as Tallahassee photographers because the architecture gives you a lot to play with. Exposed brick, open floor plans, and the kind of natural light that comes through industrial windows all create a setting that feels energetic without needing much art direction. The challenge is making a workspace feel dynamic in a photograph when the actual work happening there is people at laptops and whiteboards. You have to find the angles and the moments that communicate the energy of the place without staging something that doesn't feel real.

For the portraits of the leadership team, we wanted the images to feel connected to the space rather than pulled out of it. Environmental portraits work best when the subject and the setting are telling the same story, and Domi's whole identity is built around the community they've created inside that building. We worked with our Canon mirrorless system and used Profoto lighting to give us control over the mix of natural and artificial light that a space like that typically presents. Co-working environments can be unpredictable with overhead fluorescents competing against window light, so having portable lighting that we could shape quickly made a big difference.

This was also one of our earlier editorial assignments for a publication outside of the Tallahassee and Florida politics orbit. THOM Magazine is based in Thomasville, Georgia, and the feature was part of a broader look at the entrepreneurial ecosystem developing across the Big Bend region and into South Georgia. As editorial photographers in Florida, we love assignments that go beyond the expected and show a different dimension of what's happening in this part of the state. Domi Station represents a side of Tallahassee that doesn't always get the spotlight, and it was a great subject for that kind of storytelling through photography.

This feature was photographed by The Workmans for THOM Magazine and appeared in the Fall/Winter 2017 issue and was written by Rob Rushin. The Workmans are a husband-and-wife photography team based in Tallahassee, Florida, and we work with publications across the state of Florida, in Washington D.C. and around the United States. You can explore more of our editorial photography in the archive, see more of our work across our website and connect with us on how we can best serve you!