I had the great pleasure of covering this year’s Quantum Care Awards ceremony which took place at the Holiday Inn in Borehamwood. It was a rather pucker event with around 250 guests, a number of speakers and sponsors and a special guest star appearance by Shirlie Kemp.
This was a long event with a very busy schedule that had to run very smoothly simply to get through all the material and awards without extending the structured sections too far into the night and the brief I was given was very clear that there could be no delay in the proceedings. This meant that those receiving awards were not going to be asked to wait and pose on stage for their photograph to be taken. Normally this only takes a few short seconds but at this event those seconds would soon add up.
To get the required photographs of the award winners and runners up I was asked to extend the photography team and provide a temporary studio in an adjoining room so that posed photographs could be taken after each award. Winners would be lead to the studio and photographed without slowing down the proceedings in the main event hall. Print on the day services were also to be included which we staged in the same area.
Fellow photographer Chris Hawkes, aided by my lovely assistant, stepped up to the plate and did a magnificent job of that part of the proceedings while I covered the main event in the hall.
None of us got away before 2am.
This was a really special event and it was clear to me that the effort involved in its organisation was nothing short of epic. Debbie, Sarah and Caroline were largely responsible for its planning and I would post a photograph of the lovely three but I suspect they’d never forgive me for it.
My apologies to any customers that have left messages for me on my voicemail but have not received a call back. My service provider has introduced a new “feature” which allows clients to leave messages without providing me with the ability to listen to them.
The frustrating thing is that I know that there are messages there but after spending an hour on the phone with customer services, and after having tried all their suggestions, I’m left with the advice that I should wait for them to resolve the problem at their end. Hopefully normal services will resume tomorrow afternoon.
Update: Everything is back to normal, thankfully.
I had the great pleasure of photographing this year’s Quantum Care awards ceremony which took place on Friday night. I’ll be posting about the assignment another time but I thought I’d quickly put up this photograph of the lovely Shirlie Kemp of Wham! fame. She was presenting some of the awards to the magnificent carers who were recognised for all the hard work they put into caring for residents.
Shirlie was a real star on the night, giving up her time for a charitable event in a similar manner to
Tony Hadley of Spandau Ballet. Shirlie is married to Martin Kemp, also of Spandau Ballet so my assignments seem to have lead me on some kind of weird and indirect photo tour of the band.
I met the most amazing individual on assignment for one of my corporate clients a short while ago. The client wanted some imagery to help them market a new elderly care initiative in one of their homes which required some well lit interior shots of a resident using various pieces of equipment under guidance from a care worker. On the shoot there’s generally a little dead time where people are generally milling around while portable lighting is either being set up or taken down. It was during this time that I struck up a conversation with one of the models, Reg.
Reg, it turns out, is a World War 2 veteran and I was enthralled with his story … a story of early capture in the Mediterranean, 4 years of POW camps, learning to survive, to duck-and-dive, to live on one’s wits and a few brief instructions on how to deal with an unbalanced Polish soldier wielding a bayonet.
He talked and I listened, completely enthralled with his tale. A wonderful man that we all owe a great deal to and I for one took a great deal more away from that assignment than a few flash cards of imagery.