Have you ever had one of those moments when you realize you’re living out a childhood fantasy?    As a music fan, this assignment was one of those for me.  In fact, if someone had told my 16-year-old self that I would photograph for Billboard Magazine, I would probably have fainted from excitement.  So when the photo editor from Billboard reached out about a portrait assignment, I was pretty elated.  My subject: Mia Nygren, managing director of Latin America for Spotify.

Since the image would appear in Billboard’s ‘From the Desk of’ section, the initial direction was to make a portrait of Mia in her office at her desk.  However, since Spotify’s Latin America office works out of the Brickell WeWork building, Mia doesn’t exactly have a dedicated workspace.  This presented a bit of a challenge but we made it work.  Enter the Mashall amplifier, A.K.A the office refrigerator.  Luckily I was able to use this handy little prop to define the space a bit more, add some depth to the image, and give Mia something more interesting to sit on that an office chair.

I also did a second option with just Mia and her laptop out on the WeWork rooftop patio.  With the buildings in the background, it was just too cool to pass up.