It’s a very odd feeling, being just about the only person in the Hatfield Galleria, but that’s where I found myself on an early Monday morning. I’d recently received a phone call from the Galleria’s PR firm looking to book a photographer to shoot the complex both internally and externally and I was extremely pleased to secure the assignment. The Galleria is an excellent project and extremely interesting in interior photography terms with many features that demand attention and some quite interesting lighting conditions.
The brief I was given was quite detailed and included the requirement to shoot specific store fronts both with and without shoppers present and to include a fairly comprehensive capture of the Galleria’s branding.
To say I had a blast would be an understatement. I did get a number of funny looks (it’s hard to be discreet lugging around the kind of equipment I had with me) but nothing I wasn’t used to. I even got in to a quite detailed conversation about the gray card and what it was for from a puzzled member of the public.
The whole assignment went swimmingly and I burnt the candle at both ends to ensure that images were processed and available for the PR firm’s close deadline.
I’ve received a lovely letter from the wonderful folks at the Thames Valley & Chiltern Air Ambulance Trust. A little while back I was asked if I would be their official photographer at their tenth anniversary event which I eagerly agreed to. It was a great day and, frankly, pretty humbling when you consider that most of the people there were either crew, support staff, victims or charity givers. The whole air ambulance operation is charity funded and provides invaluable emergency cover for the local area.
“I have seen the photographs which have also been distributed to our Trustees and Aircrew. We will pick out certain individual shots and send them off to the groups involved. You managed to capture the day beautifully; you are a credit to your profession.”
I really am very grateful that they took time out of their very busy day to write to me.
I had the great pleasure of photographing a magnificent elderly residential facility recently. Anjulita Court, in Bedford, is a brand new cutting edge project with an interior that must surely be one of the most modern and inviting in the country. Vaulted wooden ceilings, acres of glass and gently curved corridors matched by a lovely indoor swimming pool and a cinema.
The shoot took a day but I could have spent far longer there, trying out different compositions and lenses and just looking for different images. The staff were all lovely and extremely helpful, particularly Karen and John, not to mention the chef who graciously agreed to pose in his kitchen.
Another great project from the people at MHA.
I’ve just completed a product photography assignment for a local Harpenden company looking to re-brand their product range. The brief was to shoot on white at the companies HQ which is where the products were stored so I took along my mobile studio and set up a white infinity curve and a couple of studio strobes.
One interesting thing about this particular shoot was the requirement to brand some of the products with new product logos after the shots were taken. That meant a bit of post production work in the digital studio with all the perspective issues that this kind of thing can raise.
Another issue was that some of the products needed powering up so that the screen displays could be depicted. This required a bit of rigging with wires poking out here and there and these needed removing digitally from the photographs with a bit of reconstruction of various product sections.
It was a great shoot for a great local firm with a lot of discussion and experimentation during the shoot. It’s remarkable how rigid wires develop a life of their own when all you ask them to do is sit still and keep quiet.