It was a pleasure to photograph for Apollo Fire in Havant for their outdoors team building/fun day.
It took place at Stansted House in Havant, which is between Portsmouth and Chichester in Hampshire. I’m London based and it’s so easy to hop on the train (at no extra cost to my client), with the bonus of having time on the train home to edit some of the images.
Megan and the team did a fantastic job organising this event of 450 staff. People were clearly having a great time and making new connections. Zing Events put on some great entertainment for the team building exercises; Purbeck and Caravanilla vans were serving really great ice cream; local company Hayling Hog Roast put on some amazing looking meaty foods including crowd pleasing burgers and (of course) a hog roast; Queenie’s and Mochatado were serving great hot/cold drinks - the iced lattes were extremely popular; Crepe Britain were serving crepes; great plant-based catering from Jo’s Kitchen… as you can see, there was a lot happening!
There were lots of activities for the staff to take part in, where they were divided into teams. What I found striking was how everybody was included - even those who were initially not so sure ended up having a great time. For those who were either a bit wobbly on their feet or simply not up to partaking in the physical games, there was a wide range of things to keep everyone entertained, including great food and drinks.
THE BRIEF
The brief itself was simple: photograph people enjoying themselves during the day, and capture a couple of awards and speeches taking place at given times. Oh, and a 450 person group shot! My own aim on top of this, as I do like to be organised to give optimal value/coverage, was to try wherever feasible to capture every activity (10 in total across a couple of large fields), all the food and drink stalls looking busy (another 10 or so), and hopefully capture nice pictures of everyone in attendance in a candid way during activities or at leisure (450 people in total). So I burned a lot of calories that day, and took full advantage of the hydration station. Thankfully, I’m quite used to running around for hours at a time, as most of my work does involve constantly moving. Even during more static events such as panel discussions and presentations, I am invariably on my feet, slowly inching around in ”stealth mode” and constantly optimising my view for the next shot, so I get plenty of exercise in this career!
PHOTOGRAPHIC CHALLENGES
The activities were fairly intense, and to make the most of them I was constantly moving around at high speed while they were on. However there were also many opportunities for me to sit calmly and take photos from a seated position, which I often do to get nice candid shots - nobody suspects the photographer to be sniping them with the camera if he’s sitting in a deckchair with camera in lap!
I do like to appear casual while actually being on high alert - I believe it helps me to blend into the environment and people pay less attention to me. This is why I usually wear non-descript but smart black clothing from head to toe (but not on this day - I was in jeans and a linen shirt so I could look presentable but not overly corporate in this setting). Sometimes, I’ll multi-task by raising my camera to a scene that I believe will develop into a great shot (for example a few people chatting who might suddenly start laughing in the next 30 seconds). I’ll then look around for other moments while keeping my camera on the first scene. I’m well practised in this, and will often work out the zoom and exposure requirements in “scene 2” by eye, meaning I can effectively shoot two scenes at once with a little foot swivel while changing my camera settings back and forth.
Thanks again Apollo, and congratulations on such a great day!
It was a joy to photograph a panel discussion for Vitra at Luca restaurant in Clerkenwell, London.
The informal panel discussion lasted around 40 minutes, with some mingling before and after. The panellists were Becky Sunshine (Freelance Journalist), Johnny Smith (Restauranteur/Owner of Luca), Imogen Kwok (Chef/Food Stylist) and Edward Barber (industrial designer). Edward designed the chairs for Luca, which can be seen in the portrait of Imogen below.
The brief was very simple indeed - capture the panel discussion, some of the audience and a few shots of people mingling afterwards.
Katarina Lalic and Johanna at Vitra were extremely nice to work with, and trusted my intuition in how to shoot the event.
LUCA RESTAURANT, WHAT’S THAT?
Luca are a high end restaurant with a relaxed feel, and fabulous chairs. I was offered a bowl of food which at first glance was rice and feta with some tomatoes on top, but it was SO MUCH MORE! Genuinely, the most excitingly prepared tomatoes I’ve ever eaten. They’d somehow infused acidity and spicy heat right through the entire tomato without appearing to have disturbed their natural texture, which was a revelation (to me, anyway).
DID THEY LIKE THE PHOTOS?
The images were delivered within a few hours of the event, so they could put them on socials.
“Thanks so much for helping us, the photos are amazing! Wow! Really lovely having you :)”. I think that’s a yes? And it was great working with Vitra.
Thanks so much to Island Green Power for having me photograph some of their staff headshots for their website. Here is a selection taken on the day. The turnaround was a couple of days, including retouch.
Try this link to see a guide in how to have your headshot taken at the workplace.
It was a joy to work with Headline Pictures a few months ago, to produce some headshots for their website.
THE BRIEF
The brief was fairly straightforward in principle - photograph the most senior staff/directors for the website. The images should appear fairly natural (rather than formal), and include a real background rather than a plain one. One problem: they were between offices, so they didn’t have anywhere to shoot. Thankfully, a couple of the team were staying overnight in a nice house, so we used this to do the shoot before they went off to work in the morning.
PHOTOGRAPHIC CHALLENGES
Every photo shoot presents unique, and not so unique challenges. Due to the nature of the space we were to use, it was going to be a case of scoping the house on arrival and coming up with ideas on the spot. This is why I brought along my trusty assistant Paul Graville, who is able to move around lighting, keep an eye on the details and make suggestions where necessary.
For this shoot, I wanted to keep a lot of the natural daylight in the photography, and elevate it with some flash without it feeling overly “lit”. I also wanted everybody to have slightly different backgrounds. This was achieved with one light and a bit of experimentation with the naturally lit house (which was beautiful but typically dark as a Victorian terrace painted in darker Victorian style colours). We shot straight into a laptop, so everybody could see their headshots during the session. This helps with posing ideas and making sure everybody is happy with their images.
Thanks again Headline Pictures!
Thanks so much to KOIBIRD for having me photograph their Christmas talk with members of Phaidon. There was also a chance to do some private shopping in their Christmas market styled shop and have Phaidon’s new Christmas Book signed. It was a real pleasure to be part of it. KOIBIRD are on Marylebone Lane in Westminster (near Mayfair), and a relatively tranquil and upmarket hop from Oxford Street.
KOIBIRD had invited Phaidon to talk about their own Christmas traditions and give pointers on how to make an extra special Christmas at home this year. This coincided with Phaidon’s The Christmas Book, recently released.
The shop was beautifully curated and presented as a kind of Christmas market, where guests were free to browse and enjoy food and drinks.
The brief was fairly straightforward - document the talks and people enjoying the evening. I was also asked to provide the event images in vertical (portrait) orientation for Instagram. When I get this request, I shoot horizontal (landscape) images with the intention of cropping vertically in post. This gives the client more options as it’s much easier to crop a vertical shot from a horizontal shot than the other way around. Most of the action in events occur on the horizontal plane so it just makes sense to shoot this way and crop later. Thanks to the high resolution of my cameras, this has no affect on image quality.
Images were to be edited and sent on the night, for KOIBIRD to use the following morning. Thankfully I have plenty of experience in fast turnaround environments in photography and I was able to provide the full 150 images on the same night (which included the same 150-ish images converted one by one to portrait mode for socials, totalling aprox. 300 images).
Thanks again to KOIBIRD, and I wish you all a fantastic Christmas!
