February '24 News

Hello everyone. Here is my long overdue February ’24 news update.

I start with a summer visit to Serenta Homecare, in Sheffield. There, I spent a few days with the amazing staff. The brief was to get a ‘hero’ style portrait of the carer and then capture the interaction between the carer and customer. The aim was to build a bank of photography that Serenta could use for marketing across their website and social media. This type of shoot can be really difficult.

However, this one was successful for several reasons. The organisation and care by Serenta that went into choosing the customers that wanted to be involved, pairing them up with their normal carers who they have a good established relationship with and giving me time with them outside of their actual calls so it wasn’t rushed. All the people involved were just fantastic. I met a lot of characters that made me smile. My favourite is the sofa shot. This was where eventually, they just couldn’t look at each other without falling about laughing.

A photoshoot very close to home now in Halifax for Activate Group. I’m normally at Activate’s vehicle repair centres but this time I was at the head office, creating ‘office lifestyle’ images for website and marketing content. With this kind of photoshoot, it’s a combination of going on the hunt for interesting situations and people that are willing to help, then asking them to either keep doing whatever they are doing or to subtly change it, giving direction to make it work better. Or, finding a nice looking situation and bringing people into it, giving direction to make it look as natural as possible. I always take lights with me to clean up the lighting, so it looks fresh and natural.

Off to the ‘Solar and Storage’ exhibition at the NEC in Birmingham with my client MCS. MCS, amongst other things, certify green technologies and contractors for the home and have a big presence at the exhibition. This was very much a reportage style photoshoot, capturing moments as they happen and keeping a close eye out for anything exciting. There was a lot to cover, from capturing MCS staff giving talks, to staff interacting with delegates, to the energy students that were bussed in from their course to attend a workshop. And of course, I also learnt a lot about solar panels!

Lastly, I travelled over to Liverpool Docks to photograph Simon Gibson for design agency – Glorious Creative. Simon, who went from lawyer to legal tech visionary, needed some branding style portraits to build content for his website and marketing. The building is a lovely space and we managed to get lots of variety. I dragged poor Simon all over the three floors and asked him to get changed about 5 times! It’s worth it to have a few different looks. You can get more use out of the images. It also doesn’t look as if everything was shot on the same day.

That’s it for now – but I’ve promised myself I’ll send a newsletter out every month this year! Bye for now:-). Claire