The images we produced for the Aviva commercial photography shoot (that we mentioned in our previous post) can now be viewed on Aviva’s new website: http://www.aviva.com, which launched on 1st July. Aviva, previously known as Norwich Union, has just completed a rebrand across its entire range of products and services with the aim of moving the company to a single global brand.

To achieve a common identity across the board, our professional commercial photographer was given strict brand guidelines to adhere to. The style of the scenarios on our shot list closely followed the Aviva photography guidelines; informal, naturalistic and un-posed, with a light, airy mood. They were shot in a way that makes the viewer feel involved in the unfolding scene and not merely looking at models posing in contrived setups.

As well as being a very large shoot, the tricky aspect was implying that we were shooting into the sun to add lens flair to the images. The good old unpredictable British weather meant that we had to create our own sun with our lighting on location using our Elinchrome Ranger kit. The lighting stands were then ‘Photoshopped’ out afterwards and the lighting effects were enhanced using the highly effective Photoshop lighting effects plug-in, Knoll Light Factory.

We’ve also introduced a new service to our professional digital photography services – 360 Interior Rotations. The ability to create 360-degree panoramas of interior locations is an excellent way for clients to illustrate their resources and facilities. Here’s an example of a 360 shot we did for Microsoft, which involves 36 images being stitched together before being turned into a flash animation.

A flock of new advertising digital photography business has come our way over the last few months. So we’ve been busy doing lots of interesting commercial photography shoots, each commission being very different from the next, for 3 clients: Fuji, Aviva (formerly Norwich Union) and Greene King.

First up: Fuji. The shoot was part of an animated digital campaign to promote the new Fuji Finepix Z30 camera, and was aimed at a young female market. We were provided with a layout to work to, requiring four female portraits. Once we’d provided the photos, the project was then handed over to the illustrator, who worked over the top of the images. The illustrations were then sent to design agency Cluster, where they pulled the animation together using all components. I think you’ll agree that the cocktail of different mediums created a rather unique campaign, which you can view via the link below.

Second was the Aviva commercial photography shoot, which involved a lot of production shooting time and post-production time; great for us as it’s nice to work on every aspect of the shoot, enabling us to consider everything before we started shooting. Our brief was to produce a single image for each of Aviva’s services, of which there are 30 in total. The images will run at the top of each page when the new Aviva site launches this June (so I’m afraid I won’t be able to upload any of the images until then). We covered eight locations, hired five vehicles and 19 models and at times four assistants were required all at once; so a rather involved but immensely enjoyable assignment.

The brief from pub retailer and brewer, Greene King, was to produce an old fashioned image of a man at the beach dressed in a Victorian style swimsuit, holding a beach ball and pint of Speckled Hen ale. The challenge here was to find a suitable model with a moustache (not your typical model, thankfully I had a mate who obliged!), a beach ball (which I sourced online) and the old fashioned swimsuit was custom made by a dressmaker (the stripes were added in post production). We used a great make-up artist, Sam Chapman, and 032 Design created the advert. Look out for the advert in a pub near you soon!

Finally, this month sees the launch of The Commercial Photographers Network /, of which I am one of the board members. Glaswegian photographer Richard Campbell set up the network when he discovered that his big name clients such as Volvo, while pleased with the work he did in Scotland had insufficient budget to send him elsewhere in the UK. When the client inevitably used a local photographer to do the work, this sometimes led to inconsistencies throughout their marketing material. So Richard’s aim was to set up a network of photographers that covered the whole of the UK, all of a similar standard to himself. He chose fifteen photographers in total, one from each major city. The website allows companies such as Volvo with photography requirements within the UK to quickly access a quality photographer through the site. I agree that there are other sites such as that represent thousands of UK photographers, however I feel that The Commercial Photographers Network offers a consistently high standard of commercial photography from a select and limited number of photographers, hopefully making life a whole lot easier for our clients. Do have a look at the site and let us know what you think.

Capturing The Moment. Nikon D3 Review

Over the past 12 years that I’ve worked as a professional photographer, I’ve worked with many different cameras but primarily with the following brands:
Linhof for large format work, Bronica and Hasselblad for medium format work and Nikon for 35 mm work.

What format I use depends on the job. It doesn’t make any difference whether I’m shooting film or digital as the same theory still applies to each format. To put it simply: the larger the format, the better quality image you capture and the sharper, larger and better tonal range you achieve. So for example large format work is great for studio photography and architecture. The smaller you go, the faster you can work and the easier it is to capture the action so 35mm is great for sport and press work.

For the past two years I’ve favoured my Hasselblad combined with my Phase One digital back as the quality is just stunning and I’m able to work well and reasonably quickly hand held. However, for capturing fast action I still rely on my Nikon D2x.

After reading some very interesting reviews on the new 2008 Nikon D3, I upgraded my Nikon this January. So far the results have been outstanding. In my opinion it’s the first digital camera that does just what I want it to. It locks brilliantly onto a moving image and shoots a very impressive 10 frames per second. This new fall frame camera comes with a 12.8 mega pixel chip. The other great plus is that as the pixels are so spread out it’s practically noise free when working at very low light levels. So in a nutshell I love it!

Here are a few examples of work that I’ve shot from the new camera.

The Year Ahead

The new year ahead looks uncertain for many. Despite us having loads of commercial photography work, we’re taking nothing for granted. Far from sitting on our laurels wondering what will happen to us as the credit crunch enters 2009, we’ve been working hard to ensure we cover all bases. Thanks to having several moneymaking options, such as stock photography, commercial photography work and editorial photography work for newspapers and magazines, I believe we’re in a far less risky position than those that work in one set area or discipline. Without a doubt, I think it also helps having enough experience to maintain a high standard in all areas.

So to our new moneymaking venture; The Packshot People, a commercial photography business specialising in high quality, value for money product photography, creative photography and image manipulation for use in a wide range of applications including catalogues, brochures, websites, magazines, packaging, marketing and advertising. Using high-end digital photography equipment and imaging techniques, The Packshot People produces cost-efficient high definition images (50MB for packshots and up to 90MB for creative photography) with a quick 48-hour turnaround and minimal fuss.

We believe that ecommerce is a growing market crying out for value for money photography. We want to prove that professional quality pack photography needn’t be extortionately expensive and that we can offer fantastic service and a quick turnaround without compromising on quality. So how do we do it? By being super organised and putting systems in place that enable us to turn work around quickly and cost effectively. The more you shoot, the cheaper it gets and all business is done online making the process fast and simple. We also do creative product briefs for advertising but will quote for the job rather than per shot.
The website launch is expected to be February 2009, so keep an eye out on this blog for launch date.

Another recent project that took cost into account, was producing stock photography images for Getty Images as cost effectively as possible. The samples attached to this blog post are of a dancer and a businessman leaping into the air. All images were shot in two stages. I shot the dancer/model in the studio over a half-day shoot and then shot the backgrounds on separate occasions. I used a typical lighting set up in the studio to simulate a typical external light. I used a high light from above to imply the sun then filled in the rest to shape the figure as best as possible. I then found typical locations that I had in mind and shot them to match the figure. You may think this seems like a bit of a backwards way of doing things but it worked and as all the retouching was done in-house it only cost a few hundred pounds. Do let me know what you think of the images.

Food Photography

We like to mix it up. In recent years most of our advertising and commercial photography work has been producing lifestyle images for stock libraries and commissioning clients. While food photography is usually left to the very specialised market of food photographers in London, we love taking on work in other areas depending on the brief.

Norfolk based restaurant Butlers in Holt recently added the well established traditional restaurant Tatlers in Tombland Norwich to its expanding portfolio. With new owners often come new ideas and concepts. The new team wished to keep the traditional look of the restaurant but also to modernise the menu in the hope of attracting a broader audience.

London based design company Design Spy approached us with the brief to see what we thought. After a meeting with an agreed shot list we allocated two days to shoot at both restaurants. All the food photography was shot at Tatlers Norwich using the restaurant as a backdrop. The lifestyle images were shot at both restaurants.

When shooting food in the past I have always found it best to have two dishes for each shot. One to set up your composition and lighting with and another fresh dish as identical to the first one as possible to shoot with. Under the heat of the lights, food changes very quickly. The fat on meat for example starts to look cold very quickly. So the fresher the food and the quicker you shoot the better.

Regarding lighting we shot lunchtime dishes and evening dishes. The lunchtime images we kept bright and fresh using a lot of local window light and a small amount of fill light for the shadow areas. To create a contrast for the evening images we used a warmed up key flash light to imply the warm light you would get from a candle or a log fire. For the shadows we used a soft cooler light. I like to use Lee filters for this, which you can buy in large plastic rolls and cut to size as you wish. The mixture of filters not only gives the food a more 3d look but also brings it to life and makes it look much more like advertising photography. A paintbrush and a pair of tweezers are also very handy for moving food around on the plate.

Samples of the food photography shoot are shown here as well as a link to the website for further examples. http://www.butlersrestaurants.com/
www.designspy.co.uk

Finely  our new studio is finished. Here are some picture of the new set up.

Change is good but you may think with the current financial crisis that we’d be mad to take on new projects and expand. Not us. We like the idea of bucking the trend and showing that a successful photographic studio can continue to grow despite predictions of doom and gloom.

First off, we’ve got a brand spanking new commercial photographic studio. An opportunity arose to extend the studio space in our building when the company in the next unit moved out. Capitol House used to be an old industrial factory, which has been converted into sturdy office units with great high ceilings and big windows that let in lots of natural light. We got permission to knock through, to create a completely white 950 square foot studio, which includes a secure storage area, an office with two editing suites, a cosy seated area for clients and a 7-metre white infinity core for shooting large items. The studio feels brighter and fresher, as well as welcoming we hope!

Last week the new space was put to the test when a client came in for a commercial advertising shoot and we were really pleased with the response and way it all worked. The new layout has meant that there is more fluidity in the working process, so not only does the client feel more involved in the creative process, but it also means we save time (and money) in post-production. The improvements have meant that we’ve been able to get the job done much faster, while having the client more involved in the decision-making process. Everyone wins.

Our ability to shoot tethered in the studio means that captured images can then be sent directly to our editing Macs via WiFi for post-production. This has the added bonus when you have a client such as an art director with you on the shoot, he/she can watch the images as they appear on screen as they are captured as well as overseeing the post-production stage. With the instant feedback, the photography can be adjusted according to the client’s needs.

Images in this months post are from The Advertising shoot in London for BiOrbs new Life range mentioned in Septembers Blog.

Our other news is that we’re about to launch a new photography business to complement our current services. With the economy in the state it is, we want to keep our options as diverse as possible. We can’t reveal anything at the moment but watch this space for further developments.