Case Study: Holy family University Magazine

Overview

Holy Family University, a Catholic university based in Philadelphia, brought me in for another great project this year — this time for Votis, the university's alumni magazine. And I LOVE a diverse, portrait-heavy project. The assignment was to shoot the environmental portraits behind "My Mission," a feature built around one question: how do you live the lessons of Holy Family?

The Goal

The Spring 2026 issue's editorial team needed portraits that could show the "My Mission" story visually: real people, shown in the real setting where they put Holy Family's values into practice, whether that was a workplace or a community they serve. The images also had to work in a variety of layouts. Every image in Votis is formatted differently, some run as a single vertical portrait, others stretch horizontally, and some need to hold up across a full two-page spread.

The Approach

Instead of bringing subjects into a studio, I went to them — traveling to wherever each person actually lives out their mission, so the photos showed them in their element rather than in front of a backdrop. That meant a different location and a different set of variables for every shoot.

Because I didn't know in advance exactly how the design team would lay out each spread, every setup was designed to work more than one way: vertical crops and horizontal crops of the same moment, so editors weren't locked into a single option later. For images that might be used for a two-page spread, I kept key details and faces clear of the center fold, so nothing important would get lost.

The Result

The Votis design team had the flexibility to layout each "My Mission" feature the way tey wanted to, rather than working around a single fixed image per person. The pictures were able to be used as full-bleed verticals, horizontal spreads, and across the fold — you can see it in the finished Spring 2026 issue.

Why It Matters

‍Editorial photography for a magazine has to do two jobs at once: tell a true, human story, and withstand whatever the layout demands. If the image can't be cropped, flipped, or spread across two pages, it becomes a burden on the design instead of a perfect addition to the story.

This wasn't the first time Holy Family and I have worked together — I also covered the groundbreaking for the university's Bold Vision campaign and other projects along the way. Repeat projects like this one are what let a university build a consistent, recognizable visual identity across everything from campaign events to alumni storytelling.

If your organization needs photography that can be used across a magazine, a website, and everything in between — let's talk about building a shoot around how your team actually needs to use the images.