real life, real impact: margaret Lampert on shooting awareness campaigns

Photographer Margaret Lampert’s portfolio is abundant with authenticity, showcasing her innate ability to capture the human condition as it emerges in the faces of professional talent and real-life subjects alike. In a recent job for a health care therapy, Lampert was able to work with the latter, photographing young people who live with a rare muscular condition.

“It’s always gratifying to work with real patients, and was especially so on this job where we were working with inspirational youth who have the most amazing, optimistic spirits,” she shares. “Typically when we work with real patients, we’re creating images for an awareness campaign directed toward caregivers and health care professionals. So if there’s a new treatment that might improve their quality of life, these campaigns are how they find out about it. That feels important because a lot of these therapies are making a real difference.”

Lampert explains that everything in awareness campaign jobs is designed around the patients’ comfort levels and abilities. She aims to build a small team with a minimal shoot-day footprint. Rest time is built in, and pre-shoot meetings are held to build rapport and explain the ins and outs of the process. “That way, by the time we’re in each other’s presence, we already feel like we know each other a little bit,” she says. “By taking these steps, what I’m able to capture feels more authentic.”

This particular campaign also included an illustrative component, so Lampert took extra consideration to compose the right postures and angles so that the artist was able to integrate her sketches with ease. Adding to the intentionally small production team, a DP shot video and recorded audio of patient testimonials, which are both used in the final campaign.

“These types of jobs are such an important part of my work,” says Lampert. “We design a crew to be the most efficient and also the easiest on the patients. This is as critical as the final images themselves.” To see the awareness campaign site, link here and here, and to see more of Margaret’s authentic imagery, link here.