Commercial Photography

Montana commercial art and photography for Billings Clinic

Over the past year I have been selling many of my photographs of Montana to Billings Clinic, the largest healthcare provider in the state of Montana. I has been my pleasure working with such great people at Billings Clinic and to have my photography adorn the hallways and rooms in their hospitals and clinics across the region.

Recently Billing Clinic shared with me some photos of my work hanging on the walls in their buildings. Above are some of those photos. They are a good example of the kind of corporate art services I can provide to corporate, hospitality, and healthcare clients...sometimes needing to provide hundreds of prints at one time for new construction projects.

I look forward to providing photography to Billings Clinic in the months and years ahead.

Providing prints for Village Inn restaurants

I closed a very nice sale this past month and I couldn't be more excited. My photos exclusively will be hanging inside the interior of newly remodeled Village Inn restaurants across the country. Village Inn is owned by ABR Holdings, which also owns O'Charley's Restaurant & Bar, Ninety Nine Restaurant & Pub, and Bakers Square Restaurants.

Village Inn Logo

Village Inn is a casual dining chain of restaurants totaling almost 215 locations across the United States. Its restaurants are known for their breakfast menu items, including buttermilk pancakes, crepes, omelettes, and eggs. They also feature a variety of salads, sandwiches, burgers, and dinner items. Their pies have won numerous awards from the American Pie Council.

The sale will have me provide Village Inn with approximately 25 prints for each of their 215 restaurants over the next three years. It's just another example of Todd Klassy Photography being able to provide corporate, hospitality, health care, and government entities with large quantities of prints for their projects.

If you look above you will see some photos from the first batch installed. One down, 214 more to go.

Many of the prints I am providing are photos of Montana, but they all have a very rural theme, which is right in my wheel house. I consider it an honor to provide Village Inn with art that will greet its customers at all of their locations around the country. I couldn't be more happy.

Photos used in remodel of Best Western Inn on the Park

Changing the color of cows

What do you do when you have a customer call you and say, "You know, I really like that photo of the long line of red Angus cattle, but I really wish they were black Angus. Could you shoot that scene again, but only with black Angus cattle?"

Um.

No.

Some really do think my ranching photos are staged. And they must think ranchers have a herd of each breed tucked away somewhere. They don't realize my ranching photos are candid, documentary shots for the most part. Recreating any of these scenes would be difficult, if not impossible. Luckily I have a few tools available for situations just like this. Yes, and that tool would be called Photoshop.

I had never done something like this before, but I was pretty sure I could use Photoshop to change the color of the herd from red to black. What I did was desaturate the reds in the herd of red Angus. I then repeated over and over again until most of the red was gone. But then they looked like gray Angus (no, there's no such breed). Then I adjusted the expose a bit, added some contrast, darkened them a bit, and I suddenly had a herd of black Angus cattle. That pleased the customer. But I'm confident it would not please this particular ranching family who prides itself in raising red Angus. So I have already apologized to them in advance.

But the important thing to remember is that Photoshop can't fix everything. In other words, don't ask me to turn a herd of BLACK Angus into RED Angus. That's not happening.

Helicopter work on Hi-Line is a chance for me to make some aviation photos

People who live along U.S. Highway 2 and the Hi-Line in extreme northern Montana might be wondering what that helicopter was doing flying up and down the railroad tracks. Always looking for a new photo op (especially when it involves aviation photography) I decided to hunt down the helicopter and find where it was landing. And it didn't take long to find it.

The helicopter was an Enstrom 480 owned by Cline Air Services and Central Valley Helicopters, which are located in Ellensburg, Washington. They are a small company that uses its fleet of helicopters to perform aerial seeding, fire suppression, wildlife surveying, charter tours, construction, and other related services to a variety of different companies and individuals. In this particular case their services were contracted by BNSF Railways to spray noxious weeds along the railroad right-of-way along the tracks in north central Montana.

The company uses on board GPS technology so the helicopters are able to apply herbicide precisely using this form of aerial application. They helicopter would fly up and down the tracks along a straight line spraying the weeds for about 15 to 20 minutes before landing on top of a large support truck to presumably take on additional fuel and/or herbicide. The pilot then took of and began the process all over again as the crew kept moving east to continue their work in the days that followed.

The Enstrom 480 is a popular and easy to fly light helicopter specifically designed as a trainer to teach pilots how to fly. It is also used to transport people (it can hold five people including the pilot), and for specialty purposes, such as this one...spraying noxious weeds for the railroad.

The best part was watching the pilot repeatedly stick its landing on the small platform welded to the top of the support truck, which is used to replenish its fuel and/or herbicide. It only took a few minutes to resupply before it took off again to continue spraying along the railroad right-of-way.

Above are a few aviation photos I made of the helicopter and its work just west of Kremlin.

Also take a look at my other examples of industrial photography here:

http://www.toddklassy.com/industrial-photography/