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Edify, May 2024

The Future Is Now

The feature spread, Due Process: Sam Jenkins lit in pink and yellow dots, the title on the facing page
The feature spread, Due Process: Sam Jenkins lit in pink and yellow dots, the title on the facing page

Ryan Parker photographed Sam Jenkins for the cover of Edify’s May 2024 Innovation Issue and for its feature Due Process, and three of the people behind Nanostics for Data-Driven Diagnosis in the same issue.

The story

Due Process

Jenkins is managing partner of the consulting firm Punchcard Systems and CEO of Standard Field Systems, an Edmonton startup that has moved the roadside sobriety test police give suspected impaired drivers from pen and paper to a mobile app. Developed with help from Edmonton Police Service traffic officers, the app keeps every test consistent. York Regional Police in Ontario became its first customer in June 2023.

Data-Driven Diagnosis profiles Nanostics and ClarityDX Prostate, a test that combines machine learning, blood biomarkers and Alberta health data to predict aggressive prostate cancer and may spare patients a painful biopsy. It ran with portraits of chief commercialization officer Colin Coros, co-founder Robert Paproski and chief scientific officer Desmond Pink.

On the issue’s contributors page, Ryan Parker noted that affordable, high-powered LED lights and a mirrorless camera made it easier to land the yellow circle on Jenkins’s face, a look that had taken great effort with strobes.

Magazine
Edify
Issue
May 2024
Cover line
The Future Is Now
Ran as
The cover, the contents and contributors pages, Due Process across three pages, and Data-Driven Diagnosis across four pages
Words
Eliza Barlow (Due Process), Jesse Cole (Data-Driven Diagnosis)
Art direction
Kim Larson
Photographs
Ryan Parker

As printed

The cover, and the pages.

  1. 01Edify, May 2024

    Edify magazine cover, The Future Is Now: a man in a dark shirt lit in pink and yellow dots
    The contents page of the Innovation Issue
    The contributors page, Ryan’s portrait and his note on lighting Sam Jenkins among the others
    The feature spread, Due Process: Sam Jenkins lit in pink and yellow dots, the title on the facing page
    The story continued, a second portrait of Sam Jenkins in the dots
    The feature spread, Data-Driven Diagnosis: Colin Coros of Nanostics against peach, a hard shadow behind him
    The story continued: Robert Paproski, co-founder of Nanostics, on peach
    The story’s last page: Desmond Pink, Nanostics’ chief scientific officer, on peach

The frames

The photographs, before the type.

  1. 01The photographs

    The frame itself: Sam Jenkins, bearded, lit in pink and yellow dots
    A lighting test sent to Kim before the shoot: yellow dots on pink, a striped shirt
    The same man turned side on, the dotted light running down the length of him
    Standing, hands at his sides, the dots across the wall behind and across him
    Standing, hands in pockets, the dots falling from the left
    Landscape, facing the camera, the dotted light full on
    The other lighting test sent to Kim: white dots on violet
    An innovator in a rust shirt, lit against a peach gradient
    An innovator looking off frame, a hard shadow behind him on peach

How it got made

The brief, the room, the frame.

I’d done this look once before, for an actor’s publicist during COVID. That time it was strobes: a spotlight with a gobo and a gel, where you can’t see what the light is doing until it fires, and the smallest move of the light changes everything.

For Edify’s innovation issue Kim wanted dots for Sam and a gradient for the Nanostics founders. I tested between other shoots and sent Kim the options, and we went with yellow dots on pink: more contrast and punch. This time I used a continuous LED spotlight and a mirrorless camera, so Sam could see the yellow circle and line it up on his face himself. That ease made the studio more playful, which almost always gives better pictures.

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