Building your Entourage

Recently, our Women in Design group hosted an Entourage photoshoot during our weekly Friday’s at Four, which serves as an end-of-week social gathering for PAYETTE employees. During this photoshoot, PAYETTE staff had the opportunity to dress up and pose for photos that would later be incorporated into our project renderings. Through a collaborative effort with our architects, Marketing team and 3D Visualization Group, we were able to create a diverse library of entourage that will be used to bring our design ideas to life through realistic renderings. So, what’s the point in doing this process in-house, and how can other firms adopt this practice?

At PAYETTE, we specifically design buildings for academic science, research and healthcare, and we deeply value the close relationships we build with our collaborators – clients, consultants and each other – on the journey from design to reality. We aim to elevate and humanize these spaces. For this reason, having a custom set of entourage material that reflects how our clients will use the space is critical aspect of our renderings.

A resource for both designers and clients, our high quality graphics translate design intent into an easily comprehensible communication tool. Working alongside our design teams, our visualization team creates realistic renderings and interactive experiences of our proposed designs. By having an in-house photoshoot, we opened the conversation to the entire office to share their ideas on designing spaces and what types of entourage materials would be useful for future renderings.   

Our 3D Visualization Team members are our in-house rendering experts, and with their instruction, we were able to choregraph the shots to make the post-production process as seamless as possible. Those who have worked on a rendering, either in school or in their professional career, have searched for entourage that was too specific or nearly, if not completely impossible to find. This exercise allowed the renderer to not only compose their own entourage but also to be the subject.

To get started, we collected a few outfits and props, including scrubs, lab coats, iPads, backpacks and stools. With two staff members operating cameras, and the assistance of artificial lighting and a green screen, we quickly shot content from different angles while PAYETTE 3D Visualization Designer Raha Ahmad directed our models, resulting in a few hundred photos.

It was a fun ice breaker for all staff involved, igniting conversations between people who might not otherwise interact in their day-to-day project work, and with minimal effort, we were able to create a mass of material which will serve our firm for years to come.