A week before Christmas I received a call to see if I was able to do a shoot in Cornwall.
Having lived in Cornwall for a brief time in my life and like many also spent many happy holidays here I was excited to hear more about the assignment.
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After my shoot earlier in the year for Numatic (see blog post) I was asked to capture another people-based brief for the company.
The brief this time was for a new brochure and other promotional material for their Service Care Package involving two models.
Back in February, I was approached by the marketing team at Numatic International who you probably know for their famous Henry Vacuum Cleaner brand.
They had the opportunity to showcase one of their commercial products on location in an Mc Donalds restaurant which was closed to the public during the Covid lockdown.
Back at the end of November last year I was contacted by my client Receipt Bank and asked to look over a location-based advertising photography brief they needed shooting.
To give you a brief overview Receipt Bank produce an app that allows business owners to easily scan their receipts avoiding spending valuable time manually entering them into spreadsheets.
The brief was simply to capture three business owners at their places of work with the final images being printed on the walls in Receipt Bank’s London offices and potentially other media.
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I hope this post finds you all well at this very challenging time.
March was an incredibly busy month with me out shooting nearly every day for a new travel accommodation company. Of course, this came to a sudden halt with the travel restriction came into place which was definitely needed.I must admit I’ve not been bored. I’ve used my time in my home office to take some advanced training courses to add to my existing skills and do some other things that seem to have been pushed to the back of the to-do list.
This week I completed the lifestyle image below titled Arches Of The Palace.
The models Emma & Nathan were captured back in chilly November outside my studio and the background is Rhodes in slightly warmer weather!
Thanks to good planning and care the retouching came together both seamlessly and in good time.
Back in November, I was commissioned by my client Receipt Bank to capture several of its clients in their workplaces.
The final images were destined to be printed into large promotional pieces and I’ll be publishing theses as soon as I can.
When I’m on an assignment I’m always looking beyond the brief anticipating other ideas while I’m at a location.
This was one of those occasions when the guy and the amazing location was too good not to capture other options after of course, I had captured what my client wanted.
The final image below is a still image that I have animated in After Effects which can be used for short social media content.
For clients, it gives extra value by offering video production services that allows the repurposing existing images and extending their budgets further.
[su_youtube url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vq-vxwwjMrA”]
A few years ago I was commissioned to create a campaign image for a private school by Ice House Design in Bath.
The brief required that I did some animal photography and a Photo Composite a stag onto the sports field of the school.
I have to admit I often love the challenge of sourcing the elements needed for composite work but have to admit I thought finding a stag would be a tall order.
In fact, after a short time searching I found South West Deer Rescue Centre located within 20 minutes of the studio.
The centre was a charity run by a lovely chap called Mike and after a brief chat on the phone and a visit for a recee he introduced me to Rubus who was to be my model.
The shoot day went like clockwork and week later I had completed the retouching and delivered the job.
A week or so later I returned to the sanctuary as I wanted to photograph Mike feeding the deer their favourite snack Rich Tea biscuits!
Last week I finally got around to shooting some models to be able to complete several images I had captured from my latest trip to Greece.
Casting the right models for a shoot together with right styling is always something that needs careful consideration to work well.
On top of that because this image was a composite the actual photography needed very careful planning as lighting, light quality, perspective, colour amongst many other things all needs to come together for the final image to work seamlessly.
Shooting Plan Mark Up
Even with all the best planning however the odd curve ball can still pop up. Despite preparation the night before one of the models shirts got a little creased on route to the shoot.
Normally this would not had been an issue except the studio iron decided to retire itself ! Fortunately I knew a digital solution and with the schedule being tight I decided this would be a better than have a delay acquiring another iron.
The background image was captured pre dawn and created from around 27 frames stitched together in post to allow for a more pleasing perspective with a 41mm lens and deliver a wider dynamic range.
I decided during the final stages of the composite to change the colour of the female models top from blue to a more contrasting orange to help draw the viewers eye to the models.
The second thing that people often ask after I tell them I’m a commercial photographer is “how did you get into that”
I must admit to often asking the same of others I meet as either I’m just nosey or intrigued about the work paths people follow in life.
I always tell my children although all are quite young still (I was a late starter) you are a long time working so find something you love and make a career in that.
One of the beautiful things about photography is that there are no set ways into it. You can go and get a degree, attend part-time evening classes, assist or simply teach yourself.
Not being the academic type I chose the self-taught route with a short stint as a rather poor assistant.
Ultimately it is the work you produce rather than how you got here that counts at the end of the day.
My journey was rather as my mum would say arse backwards!
My father had an interest in photography and this is definitely where my interest initially came from at around 14 years of age.
This did not last for long and for whatever reason I sold my camera and moved onto other interests or 5-minute fads as my mum would call them (she had a phrase for many things in life and most not printable!).
As a teenager, my interests turned to riding Vespa and Lambretta scooters to rallies and events across the UK with my friends.
This was the 80’s and by August of 1984 at the age of 16, I decided I wanted to build a custom show scooter.
Another passion I had inherited from my dad was the love of Greece with its rich history and of course mythology.
This was to be the theme for my scooter build and decided to travel around the archaeological sites of Greece for a week for further inspiration.
This trip turned out to be the catalyst for my lifelong love of photography.
I borrowed my dad’s very impressive camera kit consisting of Canon A1 and several lenses including a monster of a 200mm zoom.
Looking back I think I probably enjoyed the attention I received from having such an impressive looking camera around my neck.
A Cat Sits At The Gate To The Old Town Rhodes At Dawn
In 1985 the scooter was completed titled “Chariot Of The Gods” and it won several awards at many of the shows I attended.
Chariot Of The Gods And It’s Awards
Chariot Of The Gods On Cover Of Scootermania Magazine 2007
It was around this time a national magazine was launched called Scootering which I approached and started to freelance for.
I couldn’t believe it I was actually getting paid albeit very little to shoot the people, scooters, and places in the scooter scene which at the time was my life ..I was hooked and decided this was the career I wanted.
My first magazine cover in 1988
I needed to learn faster so I consumed as much knowledge about commercial photography & printing as I could and enrolled in a home study course with the New York Institute Of Photography to learn the fundamentals.
This also allowed me to study while still working in the family Carpet & Furniture business.
Most of my knowledge was then gained by large amounts of shooting and note-taking, so basically much trial and error.
Approaching the late 80’s an opportunity to start my own business came along with the government’s Enterprise Allowance Scheme together with the Princes Youth Business Trust.
This gave me a grant for equipment plus a loan of £1000.00 to kick start my career as a commercial photographer.
In January 1990 my business called Apollo Photographics was launched.
Looking back now I don’t know how the hell I thought I was ready to enter business especially as my photography was still very raw to put it kindly but as Nike say “Just Do It” and indeed I did.
Business, however, did roll in from small local businesses, local papers, and tourist boards.
Circa 1991 with no apparent fear I booked an appointment to show my work to Somerset-based Clarks Shoes and incredibly came away with the biggest shoot to date which gave me my first real big break into work as an advertising photographer.
The job went well and I apparently became the flavour of the month and more work followed from Clarks for the following 12-18 months and I thought I had made it ….but I was very wrong!.
A career as a commercial photographer can be a cruel bitch and you can never sit back and relax for any length of time especially in the digital age where everything changes so quickly. The country went into a recession and work did go very quiet. It was around this time that another client who probably recognised I needed a photographic reality check got me a day assisting a friend of their’s who was a well-established commercial advertising photographer based in Bristol called Colin Peacock.
That client was right Colin’s studios and his work was an incredible wake-up call for me and I quickly realised how little I still really knew.
I was lucky with my timing in that Colin was in need of a second assistant so I ended up putting my business on hold and staying with him for around 9 months.
We worked on many large-scale shoots for well-known clients. The most memorable being a day at St James Palace in London shooting a royal portrait of Princess Alexandra.
Eventually, however, I got itchy feet and despite knowing I still had much to learn I left Colin to continue on my own.
I know he rated my chances of making a living in photography at exactly 0 and at that point looking back, I would have to agree with him.
However, quoting my mum once again she would say “You’re like a dog with a bone once you get a bee in your bonnet” meaning I’m quite a tenacious bugger if I get an idea in my head and for me not being a Photographer never entered my head for a second.
So as you can see my path was indeed slightly arsed backwards but passion, hard work, eagerness to keep learning and a refusal to give up is what has guided me this far and still does. Yes it can be hard and yes I’ve had doubts probably at least once a month but pack up and do something else ?… Nah I’m like a dog with a bone.
Corporate Commercial Photography Shoot Businessman With Coffee
This image is from an advertising shoot last year for Knorr which took me to Copenhagen for a whirlwind shoot.
This was not my first trip into Europe for Knorr having previously shot in Rotterdam a couple of times. I was once again briefed by Bristol agency Flourish to what was required for the product which was for Unilever‘s Knorr Artisan range.