Biola’s Marketing team hired me on as a photographer to develop their library around lifestyle, events, and studio photography. We updated the staff member profile images, documented hand-crafted design work, and an executed a giant library of student portraits for their largest campaign.

The university developed a multi-year campaign with a goal in mind to raise millions of dollars and needed a face for it… hundreds of faces. My boss appointed me as the owner of this giant project. I setup the gear lists, setup the shoots, and shot/retouched the selects.

Every day I’d setup shop with my tethered 5Diii and strobes for a couple hours. Students would stop to sign a release form, draw their personal phrase on a poster board and give me their best “cheese.” After three weeks, I accumulated hundreds of photos.

I chose to batch edit these shots in Lightroom for two reason: one to view multiple images at the same time and keep a unified color profile across the images, the other reason because the level of retouching was more lighting/color-based. The campaign appearance was setup to be natural/raw feel which meant minimal retouching from a contouring or make up perspective.

Once the printers got a hold of the finalized images, Biola’s campus was lined with temporary structures along walkways and these photos plastered all over them. Students responded extremely well to the installations by Instagram-ing and tagging their friends. It generated a big buzz around the school and was the home base initiating the global tour for the #HaveTheCourage campaign.

The photos ran strong and was only the part one of two for the campaign media. Part two brought in video which called for alumni testimonials in their current lives. I was brought on as a grip and traveled with the team all across California. The media team rendered out impactful stories that paired with the student portraits. Between the two collections, Biola was ready to host a gala.

At the Ace Hotel in LA, Biola took over the entire area with people dressed to the nines and quality entertainment. Attendees were walked through the red carpet entrance straight to my photo-booth to help record who appeared that night. During the gala, the photos were projected on the walls while the students in them walked around accepting donations.

The night finished off with a concert featuring Josh Garrels and Phil Wickham. The photos we took from that night were featured in the Biola Magazine to recap the event. All-in-all the night came away with a huge success in fund raising specifically from one person who gave 12 Million dollars.

After the campaign circled the globe and came to a finish, Biola surpassed the goal of $180,000,000 and reached a total of $240,000,000. The money dispersed into different disciplines and provided new buildings, scholarships, and the continuation of Biola’s work as a university Below is a screenshot that breaks down more numbers on how they were able to reach $240M.