First Bank... Again!

A few months back, I wrote about a shoot that I did for First Bank and Trust back in suburban Chicago.  We did a fine job (I think) of capturing the fall experience, and they decided that it would be swell to have some summery imagery to add to their library, so I had the great pleasure of returning to Chicago to work with my friend Tif from palantir.net, their web designer, and Jill from the bank.  These two put up with me for twelve hours, and were real troopers.

One of the things that amazes me about this sort of shoot is that since we're trying to capture the real flavor of the neighborhoods and the bank's customers, we basically just approached people and asked them to do their thing, I'd take their picture, and they'd sign a release.  It really surprises me how random strangers agree to participate.  It really shows how important this bank is to it's customers, and how kind people can be.

Enjoy!

-Sam

Our first stop was the Wilmette Harbor, with the Bahai Temple peaking out in the background.

Boats are cool!

Aren't these two duckies cute?

So, our first friendly subjects were the Coast Guard, who happened to be playing volleyball in the park.  They thought that being referred to as "models" in the model releases was absolutely hysterical.  Every errant ball was "a threat to their money maker!" as they shielded their faces.  I guess you had to be there...

I've never photographed volleyball before, so it was a little bit hit or miss...

But I got better over time.

Next we made it into one of the branches, and alas found more friendly folks willing to have their banking transactions documented.  And surprisingly, most of them have great nervous smiles.

And how perfect is this?  Smiling with a checkbook with the logo on it!

And the bankers were also very helpful and friendly while posing.

The tellers at my bank don't smile like this.

To get some shots of the new Main St. branch, Tif and I climbed on the roof of the building across the street (who's a client of the bank).  Here's Tif hanging out on a ledge in case I needed help getting over it with my camera.

This is the shot I got.  Neat, but...

The shot at street level worked a lot better.  Oh well...

How cool is this?  A mom and her kids doing junior banking.  Well, they sort of were passing through, and they agreed to pretend to sign up for junior banking (because they already had), and goof off for the camera before they went back to the ice cream place across the street.  We totally lucked out with this one.

Counting money is fun!

The Church Street branch during a strangely quiet rush hour.

Fountain Square in Evanston.