Tuesday: Studio Portrait Photography in Coventry
On Tuesday, I did a whole day of studio photography in Coventry of some students for their university's website. I was working in a big studio alongside a video crew where I set up my lights and background on one side of the studio and the video crew set up theirs on the other side. The students were being filmed to do some video testimonials about student life at their university.
My brief was to take some still photos of the students against an off-white / light-grey background to match the lighting and background of that used in the videos. My photos are to be used as the full screen of each web-page, but I had to leave plenty of blank space to the left of the subject for text to be over-laid and for the videos to be inserted. It was a long day of filming and photography, but it was also enjoyable as the students were fun to work with.
Wednesday: Public Relations Photography in Warwickshire
Wednesday was my day for doing PR photography in Warwickshire. I was commissioned to photograph the whole board of the Environment agency (headed by Lord Chris Smith) on their visit to a cement works to gain an overview of the environmental impact of the operation.
It was quite a tricky job as I had to react very quickly to the rapidly changing lighting conditions as the delegation toured the site. It was a very warm and sunny day, which caused its own problems as bright sunlight can be very harsh as it casts deep shadows which often have to be dealt-with by the sympathetic use of fill-in flash. However, as they were all wearing highly-reflective high-visibility jackets to comply with health and safety rules, this ruled-out using direct on-camera flash (unless I wanted them to look like glow-worms!) The site tour moved very quickly, so after dealing with the bright sunlight, they went inside the plant and were plunged into darkness. I managed to deal with the lighting challenges while keeping up with the tour and remaining as unobtrusive as possible. All in a day's work!
Thursday: Corporate Editorial Photography In Leicestershire
On Thursday, I was doing corporate photography in Leicester as I was booked to photograph a staff conference for a housing association at the Walkers Stadium. It was a large conference as there were around 400 delegates. My brief was to photograph both the main presentations to the entire group as well as the smaller workshops. The resulting photographs will be used in their internal communications, on their website and in their annual report.
One of the workshops was about time management and they used actors to highlight the mistakes that most of us make. They started off with a very cluttered desk with paperwork piled up. I wonder how many of the delegates thought it looked just like their desks - I know I was thinking just that!
Friday: Corporate Poster Photography in Surrey
On Friday, I drove down to Wokingham in Surrey to do some more corporate photography. This time, I was photographing a heavily pregnant woman in her industrial workplace for a corporate poster which will be displayed in all of her company's offices and operations centres. I had to leave space on the pictures for the text to be over-laid, so I was given the layout of the poster and was instructed to take photos that fitted it. All went well and I was pleased that the excitement of the photoshoot didn't induce the woman's labour!
Saturday: Commercial photography in Derbyshire
On Saturday, I was commissioned to do some commercial photography in Derby by a logistics company who needed me to photograph some of their lorries and drivers at one of their depots. We were very lucky with the weather as we were blessed with a clear blue sky and unlimited sunshine. After the shoot at the depot, I was dropped off onto a flyover bridge to take some shots of both the front and back of a lorry on the road. Thankfully, I was collected again so I could go home to enjoy the rest of the weekend sunshine!
Many people don't appreciate all the time that is spent downloading, editing and optimising photographs as they only see the time spent on the shoot itself, however many hours are spent on these activities in order to get professional results. All this work has to be fitted in around the shoots, so as you can see, last week I was burning the candle at both ends to meet my clients' deadlines.
Hopefully this glimpse into my week will illustrate the variety of photographic work that I do and I hope you will see why I love my job so much.
