Ryan Parker photographed Dr. Jana Rieger for Empowering Patients, a three-page feature in the Spring 2021 issue of Leap, the Alberta Cancer Foundation’s magazine.
The story
Empowering Patients
Dr. Jana Rieger is a professor of rehabilitation medicine at the University of Alberta and research director at the Institute for Reconstructive Sciences in Medicine, and has worked at Edmonton’s Misericordia Community Hospital for more than 20 years. With two colleagues she developed Mobili-T, a 15-gram biofeedback device worn under the chin that works with a phone or tablet, so head and neck cancer survivors with swallowing trouble can train those muscles at home. The Alberta Cancer Foundation funded it in 2014, and it went on sale in the United States in September 2020.
- Magazine
- Leap, the Alberta Cancer Foundation
- Issue
- Spring 2021
- Ran as
- The feature across three pages
- Words
- Debby Waldman
- Art direction
- Kim Larson
- Photographs
- Ryan Parker
As printed
The cover, and the pages.
01Leap, Spring 2021
The frames
The photographs, before the type.
01The photographs
How it got made
The brief, the room, the frame.
Kim loved the blue Dr. Rieger wore in a reference photo, and wanted the shoot crisp, light and springy, on white or a shade of that blue. I already had a blue backdrop pretty close to it, so I set up for that and kept white handy. Then she brought a pink dress too, and I had a pink backdrop from my kids’ and actors’ headshots, so we had to do that as well. The magazine ran both.
← BOMA SQFT, 2025 / 26 · Leap, Summer 2020 →
Have a piece that needs a portrait? Get in touch with the story and the deadline.
Book Now