Jose Calderon

Creative & Production Leader
Director · Director of Photography

Twenty years of visual storytelling. More than a decade leading video and photography at Principal Financial Group, building the teams, visual standards and production systems behind national and global work. Still behind the camera.

View Work About Me Resume ↓

Reel · 1:37

Selected Work

Interview build inside a warehouse, crew and lighting

Building and Running an In-House Production Capability

Principal Financial Group · Creative, production & studio leadership

Setting the visual standard, building the team around it, and running the operation that let an internal group take on work that would otherwise have gone to an outside agency.

Bob's Red Mill

Principal · Growing Businesses · Director of Photography

Establishing a visual language and lighting real environments for national campaign work, without losing the authenticity the story depends on.

Norwalk Public Library

Capital Campaign · Director · DP · Editor

Complete ownership of a story with minimal resources. What happens when I'm handed the entire problem.

Principal Asset Management

"Actively Invested" · Broadcast · Video Production

Protecting an idea through enterprise complexity: brand, legal and compliance review at broadcast scale.

Black and white studio portrait series, lighting visible

The Black & White Studio Series

Marketing film · Studio · Director of Photography

Built lighting, designed from nothing. A studio system holding a dozen subjects across five minutes.

Selected Brands & Organizations

Principal Financial Group
Bob's Red Mill
Hy-Vee
Aegon Asset Management
Krause Group
Kum & Go
Iowa State University
Elo Point of Sale
Iowa Motor Truck Association
Des Moines Menace Soccer
Des Moines World Food & Music Festival
Johnston Community School District
City of Norwalk
Lend A Hand India

Film

Building and Running an In-House Production Capability

Creative, Production & Studio Leadership · Principal

Principal Asset Management

Video Production

Norwalk Public Library

Director · DP · Editor

Decker Companies

IMTA Chairman Tribute · Director of Photography · Crew · Editor

Global Production

Pune · Hong Kong · Ecuador · London · DP, Editor, Colorist

Caitlin Clark · Confidence

Social, channel-native · Director of Photography

Bob's Red Mill

Director of Photography

The Black & White Studio Series

Director of Photography

Creative Alignments

Director of Photography

PlanOmatic

Director of Photography

Succession Story

Director of Photography

Hall of Fame Profiles

Director of Photography

Food & Commercial

Photographer · Art Direction

Late Night Legends

Photographer · Lighting Design

← Film

Bob's Red Mill

Principal · Growing Businesses campaign · 2023

Proves: I can set a visual language and light real environments for national work without flattening the people in it.

Role: Director of Photography
Challenge: Principal needed to show what employee benefits actually do for a business, without the sentimentality the subject usually attracts. The proof had to come from real employees rather than actors, and it had to survive brand and legal review at a Fortune 200 insurer.
Approach: We shot on location inside working businesses and let the environments do the characterization. Interviews were framed to keep both the person and their workplace legible in the same shot, lit to stay natural rather than styled.
What I Led: I set the visual language for the campaign and shot it. I made the call to work in available light with minimal augmentation, which kept the crew small enough to move through active workplaces without stopping business. I designed the coverage so a single shoot day produced both the long cut and every paid cutdown, which removed the need for a second production.
Outcome: National distribution across broadcast, digital and social. The format became a repeatable template for subsequent stories in the series.

Frames from the film

← Film

Norwalk Public Library

Capital Campaign · 2025

Proves: handed the entire problem and a small budget, I can own it end to end.

Role: Director · Director of Photography · Editor
Challenge: A capital campaign film has to ask for money without appearing to. The library needed the community to recognize the building as something it already relied on, and the budget was a fraction of a comparable corporate film.
Approach: Rather than lead with the building or the ask, we led with use. I filmed across an ordinary week and let patrons describe the library in their own words, then built the structure so the case for expansion emerges from what people were already saying.
What I Led: Everything. I directed, shot and cut it. Working solo meant designing every interview to be lit and recorded by one person without slowing the room down, and finding the structure in the edit from what the interviews actually gave us rather than from a script written in advance.
Outcome: Adopted as the campaign's primary highlight film. The campaign is ongoing and raising funds toward the new library.

Frames from the film

Frame from the Norwalk Public Library film

← Film

Principal Asset Management

"Actively Invested" · Broadcast · Video Production

Proves: I can carry a broadcast-grade idea intact through enterprise complexity.

Role: Video Production
Challenge: Asset management is an abstract product. The category defaults to skylines and handshakes, and the brief was to say something about perspective, at broadcast quality, in thirty seconds.
Approach: The spot is built on a single visual idea: a circular aperture that recurs as a porthole, a lens, a microscope, a tunnel, a clearing in a forest. Every transition passes through the shape, so the film argues visually for its line about perspective instead of stating it.
My Role: I ran production. That meant sourcing and managing footage across a wide range of subjects and scales, holding the visual standard consistent as material arrived from multiple origins, and moving a broadcast-grade spot through a Fortune 200 insurer's brand, legal and compliance review without losing the idea. Delivered to broadcast, digital and social specifications.
Outcome: National broadcast and digital campaign for Principal's asset management business.

Frames from the film

Frame from the Principal Asset Management spot

← Film

Building and Running an In-House Production Capability

Principal Financial Group · Creative, production and studio leadership · A decade

Proves: I built the capability behind the work, and then I ran it.

Role: Director of Photography and Studio Manager, with ownership of visual standards, production capability, studio technology and production infrastructure
Scope: National and global campaigns running weeks at a time, on location across the United States and internationally, for a Fortune 200 brand.
Precedent: This was not the first studio I built. In 2003 I designed, built and operated a full culinary production studio for a network television cooking show, from camera systems and lighting through audio, switching and live graphics for multi-camera broadcast in front of a live audience.
Challenge: An in-house team has to deliver agency-standard work without an agency's standing infrastructure. That meant building and maintaining the capability behind the work as well as producing it: the people, studio, equipment, technology, workflows and outside resources required to execute national and global productions reliably.
Creative: I set the visual standard the work was held to and wrote it down. The studio brand look book I authored defined location selection, lighting philosophy, photographic style, color palette, stock footage criteria including LOG capture, production lighting and animation, so the standard held whether a scene was shot, licensed or built. A standard only means something if it survives contact with a new city, a new crew and a new medium.
People: I built teams around the demands of each project, hiring and directing freelance crew, specialists and production partners rather than forcing every assignment through the same staffing model. I also mentored developing creative talent and serve on the DMACC Film and Video Production and Photography advisory boards, helping evaluate the skills and standards needed in the next generation of production professionals.
Operations: I managed the production infrastructure behind the work: budgets, scheduling, equipment purchasing and lifecycle planning, camera, lighting and grip packages, studio technology, and the computer and server environment supporting production and post. For location work that expanded to grip trucks, travel, lodging, vehicles, local crew, and the sequencing required to keep multi-day and multi-week productions moving efficiently.
Studio & Technology: I was responsible for the technical environment supporting the studio and production team, including equipment selection and purchasing, studio systems, production workstations, storage and server infrastructure, and the networking required to move large media files reliably through production and post. The goal was never technology for its own sake. It was building a system the creative team could depend on every day.
Stakeholders: I worked directly with marketing, communications, creative, executive and business partners to translate objectives into production plans, budgets and visual approaches, presenting creative strategy and production roadmaps to senior leadership to secure alignment and buy-in. Work regularly moved through brand, legal and compliance review and was produced for executive, national and global audiences.
Outcome: The capability let an internal team take on work that would otherwise have gone to an outside agency. Because the crew was chosen deliberately and the equipment was accounted for before anyone traveled, that preparation made the creative outcome far more predictable by the time we reached location. Predictable outcomes on unpredictable jobs is what made the in-house model viable. In a single representative year that meant 745 unique headshots shot in studio and on location, a conference gallery that drew more than 27,000 views, and workflow changes, including cloud review and AI-assisted editing, that cut turnaround by roughly 30 percent and reduced freelance spend.

On set

Studio built inside a corporate interior

← Film

The Black & White Studio Series

Marketing film · Studio · 5:07

Proves: I build light. Not available light found well, but a lit environment designed from nothing.

Role: Director of Photography
Challenge: A long roster of people, most of them not performers, each needing to look considered and consistent on camera. Shot across a single studio build, the film had to hold visual interest for five minutes without a location, a set or a second camera position to hide behind.
Approach: One hard key raking across a seamless, thrown at an angle so the background carries a diagonal gradient rather than sitting flat. Subjects placed on a small platform, isolated in the frame. Monochrome throughout, which removes wardrobe and skin-tone variation as a problem and puts the attention entirely on face and gesture.
What I Led: I designed the lighting and shot it. The wide frames deliberately keep the stands and heads in shot, so the film admits it was made in a studio instead of pretending otherwise. That decision is what gives the piece its point of view: the apparatus is part of the aesthetic, not something to be hidden. Directing non-performers to camera and keeping them at ease through repeated takes was as much of the job as the lighting was.
Outcome: A five-minute film carried entirely by faces, light and structure, with a visual system consistent enough to absorb a dozen different subjects without fragmenting.

Frames from the film

Frame from the black and white studio series

← Film

Creative Alignments

Campaign · Four cutdowns · Director of Photography

Proves: I shoot for the edit, so one production yields a whole campaign.

Role: Director of Photography
Format: A campaign family rather than a single film: a :30, an extended :30 subject-matter cut, and two :15 versions, all drawn from the same production.
Approach: Natural light in working offices and homes, subjects framed with their environment legible behind them. Coverage designed so the same setups could carry a full-length cut and every shortened version without a reshoot.
What I Led: I shot the campaign and planned the coverage around the cutdowns. Knowing in advance that the :15s needed to open on a different beat than the :30 changes what you shoot and how long you hold it.
Note: Presented as a set because that is what it is. The campaign-thinking is the point, not any one film.

Frames from the film

Frame from the Creative Alignments campaign

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PlanOmatic

Campaign · Three cutdowns · Director of Photography

Proves: real people in real workplaces, cut to any length the channel needs.

Role: Director of Photography
Format: A :30, a :15 and a :06, all pulled from a single production.
Approach: Shot inside the company's own brick-walled offices with employees rather than actors. Window light carried most of the work, which kept the crew small enough to move through an operating business without shutting it down.
What I Led: I shot it and built the coverage so the shortest cut still had a beginning and an end rather than reading as a truncated :30.
Note: The :06 is the useful one to watch. Making six seconds feel deliberate is harder than making thirty.

Frames from the film

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Decker Companies

Iowa Motor Truck Association · Chairman tribute film · Director of Photography, Crew, Editor

Proves: I can own a film end to end, and handle a subject who has to be honored rather than sold.

Role: Director of Photography · Crew hiring · Editor
Commission: Commissioned by the Iowa Motor Truck Association as a tribute to their outgoing chairman, and presented to him as a gift. Filmed at Decker Companies, the family trucking business in Fort Dodge, Iowa that he led.
Approach: The chairman interviewed in his own office, two-camera, warm and window-motivated, with colleagues and family speaking about him elsewhere in the building. Archival photographs of the company's earliest trucks carry the heritage thread the interviews talk around.
What I Led: I hired the crew, shot it and cut it. Three generations of the business appear in the film, and the edit had to make that succession legible without anyone stating it outright. Cutting a tribute means holding pauses a marketing edit would trim, because the silences are where the affection sits.
Note: A film made to be received by the person it is about, in a room full of his peers. That is a different brief from a marketing piece, and it changes what you shoot: warmth over polish, and enough room for him to sound like himself.

Frames from the film

Frame from the Decker Companies tribute film

← Film

Succession Story

Long-form narrative · 2:19 · Director of Photography

Proves: I can carry a story about a decision, not just a person.

Role: Director of Photography
Subject: A dental practice changing hands, told through the outgoing owner and the dentist taking over.
Approach: Available light in a working clinic, shot around patients and appointments. Two subjects at different stages of the same career, framed so the handover reads visually before it is described.
What I Led: I shot it, including the walk-and-talk hallway coverage that gives the film its spine and keeps two people talking about paperwork from becoming static.

Frames from the film

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Hall of Fame Profiles

Three long-form films · 6 to 8 minutes each · Director of Photography

Proves: I can sustain interview craft past the point where most corporate video stops.

Role: Director of Photography
Format: Three separate inductee profile films, each running six to eight minutes.
Approach: Interviews shot in the subjects' own offices and homes, lit to sit naturally in the room rather than announce itself. At this length the setup has to hold attention on its own, so framing and depth do the work that cutting would do in a shorter piece.
What I Led: I shot all three. Consistency across separate shoot days, different rooms and different subjects was the real problem to solve.

Frames from the film

← Film

Global Production

Principal Financial Group · Two films · Director of Photography, Editor, Colorist

Proves: I can land in a city I don't know, shoot it alone, and deliver the finished film.

Role: Director of Photography · Editor · Colorist · Sound Design
Films: Global Impact, Pune. Shot solo in India, then edited and graded by me end to end.
Takeover. A brand film drawing on footage I shot in Hong Kong, Ecuador and London, with sound design, edit and grade also mine.
Challenge: International production removes almost every safety net a domestic shoot relies on. No familiar crew, no local rental house, unfamiliar light, and no possibility of a pickup day. In Pune I was the entire crew. Everything the edit would need had to be captured while I was standing there, because there was no second chance and nobody else to catch what I missed.
Approach: Shoot for the edit rather than for the day. In Pune that meant covering arrival, place, work and people as a complete sequence, knowing I would be the one assembling it later. Takeover had the opposite problem: footage from three countries that had to resolve into one film rather than a travelogue, which is a grading and pacing question as much as a shooting one.
Where the footage comes from: I film wherever I go, on assignment or not. The Ecuador material in Takeover came from my own travel, not a commissioned shoot. Over twenty years that has become a personal library I own outright, and it is often what makes corporate work feel like it was made by a person rather than assembled from stock.
What I Led: Both films end to end. I shot them, cut them, graded them, and designed the sound on Takeover. Working in communities where I was a visitor meant earning enough trust to point a camera at children and workplaces without the result feeling extractive, and doing it quickly and alone. That is a directing problem before it is a camera problem.
Outcome: Enterprise storytelling delivered from Pune, Hong Kong, Ecuador and London, finished to the same standard as work made at home with a full crew.

Frames from the films

← Film

Caitlin Clark · Confidence

Principal Financial Group · Wooden Award · Social · Director of Photography

Proves: I shoot for the channel, not for a crop of something else.

Role: Director of Photography
Format: Square, built for feed, with captions and disclosure burned in. Part of a set delivered in 16:9, 1:1 and 9:16.
Challenge: High-profile talent with a short window. One setup, limited takes, and a piece that has to work with the sound off for most of the people who will see it.
Approach: Framed for square from the start rather than protecting a wide and cropping later, which is the difference between content designed for a channel and content adapted to it. Composition leaves deliberate room at the bottom for captions, so the type is part of the frame rather than covering it.
What I Led: I shot it. With a subject who has very little time, the job is to have the light and the frame already solved so the only variable left is the conversation.

Frames from the film

Photography

The same visual judgment, expressed in stills. Lighting, human direction and composition are one discipline, whether or not the frame moves.

Portrait & Editorial

Directing and lighting people, from boardroom to street

Annual report portrait, three colleagues in a bright office

Executive portrait against a glass block wall

Architecture & Interiors

Reading space, structure and available light

Food & Commercial

Precise control of light and composition · 2012 to present

Sports

Anticipating the moment · Collegiate and professional

About

I build and lead visual storytelling functions, and I still make the work.

My background spans creative production leadership, directing and cinematography.

For more than a decade I led video and photography at Principal Financial Group, working across national campaigns, executive communications, branded documentary and global production. I defined the enterprise visual language and wrote the studio's brand look book, the document that set the standard for location, lighting, color, stock selection and animation across the company's work. I led and mentored a multidisciplinary team of producers, editors and designers, presented creative strategy and production roadmaps to senior leadership, and built the enterprise asset library that let campaigns reuse work rather than reshoot it. The role required discretion as often as it required craft.

My approach sits where documentary authenticity meets commercial discipline: real people, real rooms, held to a standard a brand can live with.

Leading the work has always meant developing the people who make it. I mentored the creative team and advised on their continued education, and I serve on two Des Moines Area Community College advisory boards, for Film and Video Production since 2017 and for Photography since 2022, shaping curriculum, equipment and skills standards for the people entering the field next. I judge the American Advertising Federation awards for the Akron chapter.

I have never stopped making the work myself. I direct, light and shoot, and I cut when the project calls for it. I also film wherever I go, on assignment or not, which over twenty years has built a personal library I own outright and regularly draw on to keep corporate work from feeling assembled out of stock. Born in Ecuador and bilingual in English and Spanish, I've worked across the United States, Europe, Asia and Latin America. Outside production I play cello with the Des Moines Community Orchestra.

RecognitionUpper Midwest Regional Emmy, 2014
Public Content / Community Affairs

Selected talentCaitlin Clark · Bill Belichick · Jason Sudeikis · Lisa Bluder · Jan Jensen

EducationBA Graphic Communications, Iowa Wesleyan · Music performance, cello, Truman State · Audio engineering certification, SAE Institute

ServiceDMACC Film & Video and Photography advisory boards · AAF awards judge, Akron chapter

LanguagesEnglish, Spanish

BasedDes Moines, Iowa

Creative & Team Leadership

Visual strategy · Brand standards · Hiring and directing crew and freelancers · Creative review and mentorship · Agency collaboration · Executive stakeholders

Production

Directing · Cinematography · Lighting · Interview direction · Production planning · Location and studio

Post & Delivery

Editorial direction · Color · Channel-native delivery across broadcast, digital and social · Brand, legal and compliance review

Creative Technology & AI

Adobe Creative Cloud and Firefly · Runway and Higgsfield for generative motion · ElevenLabs for voice and audio · Google Gemini image generation. Actively evaluating and adopting emerging tools as the field shifts.

Creative Operations

Wrike for production calendars, milestones and work visibility · Frame.io for creative direction, review and approval · Licensed asset sourcing and rights management across Filmsupply, Artlist, Motion Array and Getty Images

Available for senior creative leadership, directing and creative production roles.

jose@digitaljose.com

LinkedIn Resume ↓