June 26 News

Hello everyone – welcome to my June newsletter. We make a start with my return visit to Lancaster and Morecambe College. We dedicated some time to the adult education side and visited the beauty therapy and the photography courses. Then concentrating on the 16-18 year olds we went from gaming to plumbing, from tourism to sport and from art to construction. We also took time to illustrate the social side of college with groups of students who were willing to help out. These days are always very full, trying to get around as many areas as possible, but coaxing teens into relaxing in front of the camera is a job in itself. However I do find it really rewarding when they find that they can actually do it – you see their confidence rise just that little bit.

I spend quite a lot of time photographing ‘office culture’ for businesses. Here are a few examples from a photoshoot for MCS. (MCS is the UK’s primary standards organisation for small-scale renewable energy technology). These types of shots seem to have many different names – I call them ‘working style shots’ but you may hear them referred to as reportage office images, environmental portraits of staff, or lifestyle shots. These images can be really useful to illustrate many different pages on a company’s website or for socials and can hint at your values and identity as a business, helping to tell your story.

I was asked to cover an event for MFT (Manchester Foundation Trust) who were hosting at Citylabs in Manchester. I try to be as unobtrusive for event photography as possible, sneaking around quietly. In reality, I’m probably more like a middle aged elephant with rubber soled shoes – but I do at least try. At every talk of this type that I cover, I always find myself fascinated by the topics and discussions. There is so much going on in the world, in so many sectors, so much knowledge and experience by those involved.

I spent half a day with Jo at Stop, Pause, Think, Now Act Agency at one of their workshops. SPTNA is a business consultancy and coaching agency and I was covering an Immersion Day. This is reportage photography where I don’t direct and I just capture events as they happen. I always find Jo’s events really inspiring and even though I’m just there in the background, I pick up lots of tips that I can apply to my own business and the way I conduct myself.

Lastly, I spent a day with White Rose Academies Trust in Leeds to capture photography to illustrate their website. We needed to get across their values of Collaboration, Community and Connectivity and to ensure the images were warm, friendly and professional.
There are lots of examples of my education photography on their website.
We also did a couple of overhead shots, concentrating on hands and props on the table. I quite like doing these shots as they can work really well – quite graphic and clean. I’m usually stood on the actual table trying not to shoot my own feet. I do get a bit crazily obsessed with the detail in the composition though which entails me going up and down a zillion times like step aerobics…