Receipt Bank Animated Still

Receipt Bank Animated Still

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.

View More Animated Stills 

 

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Lifestyle Photoshoot, Walk Before Dinner

Lifestyle Photoshoot, Walk Before Dinner

About a month ago I published a blog post titled A Perfect Moment – Capturing A Lifestyle Photoshoot called Greek Summer In Grey November Link Here
Walk Before Dinner is another image from that same shoot captured in chilly November.
I captured this background for use as a Lifestyle shot well over a year but for one reason or another I never have.
The background is of St Pauls Bay below Lyndos village Rhodes Greece.
It was created from approx 27 individual frames mostly to allow me a more flattering perspective and to keep the Chapel below and the Temple above from getting lost completely in the image.

The technical aspects of capturing Nathan & Emma was much simpler than in The Perfect Moment image.
For starters the lighting in this image was soft rather than directional which previously required matching with the direction and quality of the background.
Creating images without the models feet showing that otherwise need realistic shadows created is also much simpler hence why many people based composites are 3/4 not full lengths.

I rarely time these things but the final composite not including the background creation took approx 6 to 8 hours to complete.

 

 

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Lifestyle Portrait Photography, Capturing Mr Butt.

Lifestyle Portrait Photography, Capturing Mr Butt.

Mr Butt window cleaner Captured in Burnham On Sea Somerset circa 1993.
I can’t remember the exact year I did this lifestyle portrait but I do remember running home in excitement like a big girl to grab a 5×4 camera to do the shot!.
I had wanted to create a lifestyle portrait of this lovely chap for a while and I finally seized the opportunity.
I set up the large format camera hastily (well as hastily as you can with a 5×4) in front of what I felt was a perfect backdrop for colours.

A large-format camera is not something you would use for most of my work as a lifestyle photographer but the quality of tone and detail is simply amazing.

Mr-butt-burnham-on-sea-lifestyle-portrait

Creative Video Production, Parallax Video Lilianna The Palace

Creative Video Production, Parallax Video Lilianna The Palace

Lilianna The Palace Of The Grand Masters Rhodes.
This is an image I applied some creative post-production upon and is created from several photographs.

It was also an image I thought would work with some creative video production applied and created using 2.4D motion as a Parallax image.

Keep an eye out for some subtle motion work.

[su_vimeo url=”https://vimeo.com/333857762″ width=”1600″ height=”720″]

Stills Based Motion And Video Production Services A Perfect Fit.

Stills Based Motion And Video Production Services A Perfect Fit.

Video Production Services can involve much more than just video footage.

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

 

Rich Tea Deer !

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.

Published-stag

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!

Deer-sanctuary-somerset-composite-photo-retouching

Moving Mountains, Travel Photography Portfolio The Gumbet Windmills

Moving Mountains, Travel Photography Portfolio The Gumbet Windmills

I’d been told about this spot and the windmills many times while visiting my holiday home in Turkey.
Eventually, during one trip, I decided it was time that I grabbed my gear and checked this local landmark out and combine a little travel and landscape photography

It was a beautiful hot evening and the light was just starting to dip behind the mountains and I was keen to add the image to my travel photography portfolio.
I have to be honest after all the hype I was a little disappointed with the location when I arrived.

There were several windmills on the edge of the hillside and due to the shape of the hill I had to be closer to the windmills than I would have preferred.
This meant that the beautiful mountains and bay below were extremely obstructed by some of the windmills and the contour of the hillside.
At around this time, I was producing lots of video tutorials for a training site I owned. 

I decided I would take the opportunity to use some clever photographic and post-production techniques to create a more pleasing view and also create a video of how I achieved this for the sites members.
After some careful thought, I decided that if I moved the sea and mountains up higher into the scene and did some clean up ( remove a ropy looking windmill )this would produce a panoramic scene I knew would look stunning in the evening light.
So not an image that the purists would enjoy but one that satisfied my experience of the place even if I had to move mountains to achieve it!

Travel-and-photography-gumbet-windmllls-turkey

Lifestyle In Loret De Mar

Back in October I made a trip to the Catalonian resort of Loret De Mar.
Unfortunately the weather was the worst seen along the Spanish coast for decades which of course hindered things slightly !
Fortunately the weather did break albeit just for two brief periods and I managed to capture several locations I had scouted.
Several months on with my models Susie Coats and Andy Elvin arranged (see blog post Pre Production For Post Production) I then photographed the models images and went into post production to composite the images together into the final shots shown here.

“Whoever You Want To Be” Stonar School

A lovely campaign called “Whoever You Want To Be” for private school Stonar that I photographed and composited together a while ago.

Commercial Photography Shoot, Seeing Double For Stonar

A few weeks ago I received a call from Ice House Design In Bath which is always exciting as I’ve had some lovely briefs from them in the past.
It turned out this call was to chat about another interesting brief titled ” Whoever You Want To Be” for a private school in Bath called Stonar.

The concept was to show the wide variety of activities and opportunities the school offed by showing the same students repeated in the image but in other outfits.
After a brief chat about what I thought might be the best solution to getting the job shot and retouched Jack from Ice House explained about the rather tight deadlines that needed to be met.
The completion dates required happened to be bang in the middle of one of the busiest periods I’ve known as well a family holiday but a doable schedule was drawn up and the job was booked in.

The shoot itself was shot on location at a beautiful 18th-century Georgian mansion called Hartham Park close to Bath.
Upon arrival on the shoot day, It seemed every corner of Haytham’s interior offered me another photographic opportunity and the phrase “Kid Candy Shop” comes to mind.

Finally though myself and Les, the creative director narrowed it down two rooms that fitted the brief perfectly and the job was completed within our allotted time.

A few days (and early hours) in the post was needed to meet a couple of the deadlines but the whole job went together without any drama and more importantly, the client & agency were very pleased with the results.

Design Agency Ice House Design

Photography Simon Plant

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Published-stonar-bathmag
Published-stonar-bathlife-upright

Pre Production For Post Production. Composite Lifestyle Shooting.

Tomorrow I have a location lifestyle shoot planned with a couple of models so I thought I’d give a glimpse on how I prepare for some of my shoots.

It can be surprising to some people just how much pre-production can go into even the smallest shoots especially if they are on location.
My shoot tomorrow has it’s own particular added elements that need careful preparation and close attention and that is because the backgrounds have already been captured several months before.
When I travel I often will go out capturing my chosen locations before dawn or dusk for the best light (depending on what I’m after).
If I have a choice I prefer dawn not because I love to get up at 4am (in the summer) but because there is less likely to be any tourists around especially in popular city locations.
Saying that having been a retoucher for 21 years I know some clever techniques to very simply remove people from images in post without the need for any stress while on location if needed.

My models will be captured either in my studio or as is more often the case outside in natural daylight and supplemented with lighting if required.

So for this shoot to be captured and be successfully blended realistically in post-production there are many things that need careful attention. Here are just a few of the basics.

The light quality
Light angle
Light temperature
The surrounding elements and their colour
Camera height
Camera angle (perspective)
Lens focal length (this can be tweaked a little)

As I said these are just a few things that I’m carefully looking at.
To help me with this I create a markup image for quick reference (shown below).

Here are a few samples from a previous shoot.

As you will see in the second picture in the bottom row if possible I’ll always take a snap of myself in the scene.
You have probably already guessed that this gives me a great reference when I shoot my models to how the light in the scene should be interacting on them even if it’s not a pretty picture!

So one question you may ask is why go to so much trouble why not shoot the models in situ like many photographers?
Well, I first should add I’m definitely not against doing it all in camera and often do however there is a multitude of reasons why it might not always be possible.
The main one is simply the logistics of getting models, stylist, makeup artist and the many other people that make up a production crew to a particular location at a certain time.
For me, it’s partly the above plus, of course, the substantial costs involved as some of these images are purely self-funded portfolio pieces so budgets can be naturally tight.
The other more personal reason is it enables me the luxury of more time to concentrate on capturing the changing light and various angles the locations has to offer with more flexibility.

It was interesting to read that Lord Litchfield towards the latter end of his career shot in a similar way.
As far as the post-production is concerned there is, of course, some work (and cost involved)  pulling all the elements together but then how often these days does an image not have some retouching applied before being published? If planned and executed correctly the image can often come together remarkably quickly.

As I said above I’m quite happy working and doing it all in camera and have done so many times but for me working this way provides a flexible alternative providing it’s planned accordingly.