On Tuesday I had the great pleasure of joining the chefs of Quantum Care for a day of nutrition training at the Fairway Tavern in Welwyn Garden City. I was impressed with the commitment and knowledge shown on the day and left feeling a little bashful about my own dietary habits. Note to self: more vegetation please.
Of course there was plenty of food on show and here is a small selection of the shots of that particular subject matter:
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.
I’ve uploaded a selection of images of this year’s Harpenden Classics on the Common event to the local interest galleries. The gallery can be seen here.
This year’s Harpenden Classics on the Common was a little wetter than I would have liked.
I’ll be processing the images over the next few days and will upload them to the local interest galleries when they’re complete.
There’s a new digital creation in the digital image gallery. It’s called Abaddon and can be seen here. I wouldn’t show the kids, certainly not before bed time.
This year’s Harpenden Classics on the Common event will take place on Wednesday 29th July. The official web site announcing details of the event is available here.
This event promises two elements that have me coming back year after year; great classic cars and some very interesting photo opportunities. Last year was a particularly good one with the weather helping to deliver an exceptionally high turnout of enthusiasts and members of the public. The day’s photography resulted in some of my imagery appearing in The Enthusiast magazine.
Photographing the event is not particularly easy if you are looking to create pristine images of classic cars. There are simply too many elements around (people, other cars etc) to shoot clean frames. Last year I spent some considerable time shooting elements, little pieces of automotive magnificence, in response to the tight conditions. Some of these images can be seen in the machines gallery.
This year however I think I’ll be concentrating a little more on the editorial side of the event coverage by trying to capture the day as it is. People and cars all mingling with each other. Bedlam and classic car nirvana. What’s not to like?
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.