Doug Menuez’ Unfiltered Approach to Library Shoots: How He Captures Culture, Real Human Moments and Innovation

Photographer and Director Doug Menuez has spent decades photographing the inner workings of some of the world’s most influential companies. His background in photojournalism and visual anthropology gives him a unique ability to capture the culture of an organization—the real moments that reveal how people work, collaborate, and innovate. Whether inside top-secret labs, bustling boardrooms, or everyday office spaces, Doug’s ability to gain trust and move seamlessly through a company’s environment allows him to document authentic human experiences in his distinctive style.

Freshworks, a fast-growing CRM company offering an AI-enhanced alternative to other database services, recognized the value of Doug’s approach when they needed a new image library to showcase their teams in action. The challenge? To move beyond staged corporate photography and capture the real and raw of what day-to-day looks like at the company. Capture genuine moments of people doing their jobs, solving problems, and engaging with each other. Doug’s deep understanding of tech culture and his ability to put people at ease made him the perfect fit. After the success of an initial shoot, Freshworks invited him back to do it again.

How would you describe your approach to these shoots?

If a company wants authenticity, that means I have to get actual moments that really happen, the same as if I were on a news assignment. It’s challenging. For this kind of coverage, I try to get permission to roam freely throughout the offices, the secret labs, the boardrooms, wherever there is stuff going on in rooms that I can carefully enter and quietly make photographs of the interactions and moments that reveal the human experience and the story of this company. It’s insanely difficult because many people don’t want to be photographed in general, and certainly not without a lot of control. But this is the way to get unguarded, exciting, revealing moments that are compelling to viewers. 

I will interview employees to find out what they are normally doing and working on and then turn them loose to do actual work. Pretty soon, they completely forget I’m there. It’s now much less disruptive but totally productive for the company, and they get amazing results this way.

How does your knowledge of tech companies inform your approach?

It helps a lot because I understand where the roadblocks are and how I can navigate any challenges. This allows me to gain trust and access, which is crucial. Though my knowledge of tech companies helps, my main asset is my experience and knowledge of human behavior, gained over decades of photojournalism and documentary work around the world in many different cultures. I know how to read body language and facial expressions to anticipate what someone might do next, allowing me to get ready and capture completely candid moments. 

How did you deal with lighting, props, wardrobe, and all the usual production requirements you’d have for a typical advertising shoot? 

Our incredible producer, Dahlia Weidman, makes sure that everything in our production is designed to support the capture of real moments. So that means I prefer natural lighting wherever possible, and if none is available, I have an assistant moving around with me as I walk through the spaces who carries a portable LED to provide fill light. For wardrobe, makeup, and hair, we often will have people bring their own clothing and accessories so they feel confident.  I do like to have a rack of extra clothes to tweak situations if clients need certain colors for the brand or other reasons. Typically, people are doing their normal jobs, and I come around a corner and catch that. But we are not stopping shots to fix or style.

What are the specific challenges you face when documenting a living breathing office?

If you are not careful, you could have a lot of unhappy people. It’s a bit of an invasion of their safe space, so you have to be extremely respectful and patient. It’s all about gaining the trust of the management and then the employees so I can do what I do and move freely through the space. 

There are also demands on the time of the people you are photographing, as well as trade secrets and other issues. This requires a high level of communication and planning between the producer, myself, their creatives, and the company beforehand, during the shoot, and afterwards. You can’t just leave and hope it all went well. You have to follow up and confirm that everyone is happy with how it went. This is basic stuff for building long-term relationships that lead to fantastic collaborations. I love it.