At the end of the summer 2020 I was commissioned by a local law firm Pardoes Solicitors to shoot a series of images for their new website that was under construction.
Locations were scouted and plans drawn up for the appropriate imagery needed to help illustrate the various parts of their business and brand.
Many years ago (circa 2008) I had my own photography training site and community where I would video, present and film photoshoots and the post-production work to form an A-Z of a complete shoot.
After a few years, I decided to close the site and concentrate solely on assignment work once again. For a while, I felt I had in some ways wasted several years of my time and energy but as I have since learnt nothing goes to waste.
Some of the things that I would have never had photographed in my day to day professional life or techniques used in post-production have since proved of huge benefit to me.
The biggest benefit though was the skills I had to develop in capturing the video like the tutorials on the site were all video-based content.
Over the years these skills have enabled me to not only increase my earnings but led me to explore other Video Production Services work.
At heart, my first love will always be still photography but more and more I can see the big benefit to clients to be able to offer motion work alongside capturing stills and even repurposing stills into 2.5 d Parallax movies to provide even more content within their budgets.
[su_vimeo url=”https://vimeo.com/256236312″ width=”1600″ height=”720″]
Another area has Ive been commissioned to work in is blending video with stills which are often referred to as Cinegraphs.
This campaign was captured for client Mimecast shown on digital billboards at airports all over the U.S.A and here in the U.K
[su_vimeo url=”https://vimeo.com/192046243″ width=”1600″ height=”720″]
More recently I’ve been shooting some video combined with Time-Lapse work which I feel is a perfect fit to my photographic style.
[su_vimeo url=”https://vimeo.com/331172665″ width=”1600″ height=”720″]
Stills based motion offers an engaging alternative to purely shooting video although as with all things requires a learning curve to get the best from it.
Other samples of stills based work such as stop motion can be viewed Here
Last week I was in central London shooting for a new client Receipt Bank.
Receipt Bank provide revolutionary accountancy/bookkeeping software that helps automate tasks.
The brief was pretty open to interpretation and required me to capture corporate portraits of around 80 staff members at their London headquarters with the business portraits being suitable for website use and profile pictures for sites such as LinkedIn.
After viewing some snaps of the office space and chatting with Stuart the Creative Director we decided to utilise the corporate orange coloured couch in reception for the shots.
Stuart also wanted to capture some fun shots to hang in the office wall at the same time.
I suggested I create some Polaroid-style images complete with authentic light flares commonly associated with the instant prints which I felt would add to the fun element requested.
The shoot went well despite an issue towards the end when we had one flash unit go down but this was quickly rectified and I did not let it interfere with the flow of the shoot.
[masterslider alias=”ms-100″]
With a little post-production and 3D rendering, it was possible to repurpose the image into a simple and eye-catching image asset.
This image was a little more involved and shot with the Parallax technique in mind which allowed a little more scope for creating some depth and motion.
You can view more motion work here
Being a commercial photographer in the uk is a funny business as you never know what the next phone call will bring and the last couple of weeks have been no exception.
It started with a call from an old friend who operates KCP Ltd from Ayrshire in Scotland.
KCP specialise in transferring all types of waste with their huge fleet of lorries both from within Scotland and across the UK.
They needed to not only capture the vehicles within the beautiful Scottish landscape (something which I have a lot of experience of shooting in the past) but also corporate portraits and other images to showcase what they do.
The shoot took place over a long weekend with some changeable weather that actually worked very well with our schedule as did the locations that were chosen.
Short flight home on a Sunday evening allowed me just enough time on Monday to secure the images and repack before driving up to Heathrow for a flight to Copenhagen for Bristol Agency Flourish
I’ve worked with Flourish a few times capturing campaign images in Holland of various Chef’s for their client Knorr and this one was not different except Denmark was the location for this particular shoot.
After a change to the original location for a better one and a shorter shooting time, everything came together according to the client’s wishes.
I can’t publish any images at this point as the campaign is not yet live but as soon as I can get some samples rest assured I will.
This week I packed again for a trip to see some buyers in London followed by a meeting and a small shoot in central London for a corporate photoshoot with client Mimecast. This is followed today by packing yet again but this time for a weeks holiday and boy I feel I need one !
Have a great Bank holiday everyone….