Inside and Out

Architectural-based shoots are hard to come by outside the teeming metropolis. Architects in the North East seems to shun the services of photographers when documenting the results of their careful planning and execution of various projects, instead preferring seemingly to be content with taking a few ill-grabbed snaps of completed buildings using iPhones or compact cameras. Choosing an architect is a bit like choosing a builder – you want someone with a proven & successful track record to ensure that everything goes as planned. You would probably want to see or hear about prior work, and there is no better proof of that than professionally recorded imagery. I can’t understand why someone in the upper echelons of the earning population would be satisfied with a mobile phone picture to put in a portfolio, when it will only  cost a few hundred quid to have the project documented properly utilising composition, lighting, and straight vertical lines to accentuate and underpin their re…

The North Sea is a majestic beast – a natural wonder to the east of the British mainland. It’s a rugged, freezing body of water which creates a unique quality of light, and carves up the coastline to create an ever-changing landscape incorporating ancient castles, coastal defences hastily erected during WW2, beautiful beaches, stunning geological features, and harbours which provide sanctuary to fishing vessels. 
The agency brief was simply to provide a body of imagery to accompany the event organised by Northumberland Tourism called “From Catch to Table”. A group of catering people, PR guys, hoteliers, and tourism execs were invited to go out to sea on a small fishing boat from Amble, see how seafood is caught, then head back to land and cook the fresh produce on the harbour-side. Easy enough. I packed a Nikon D3 with a 70-200mm lens, and a D300 backup camera sporting a 24-70mm standard lens, both fitted with SB800 flash units.
Mother nature unfortunately had decided that she needed to…

Following on from the day that I shot two multi-million places at Ramside Hall in Durham, I was asked to head back to shoot the classic twilight shots. I’ve done loads of these, and I tend to favour a specific, quite complicated technique of using lots of additional lighting to accentuate the fascia and detailed surrounding environment rather than the simple method of sticking the interior lights on, waiting until it goes dark, and taking a shot. Each twilight image is the composite of around 50-60 frames, covering all aspects and exposures to create something fairly spectacular at the end. This particular night was perfect. The sky was cloudless, and the road was clear. Only one complication though – you get about 30 minutes to shoot the various frames during the time after sunset, but I had to shoot both properties at the same time. There was only one solution – a tandem setup.
The properties were about 200m apart, and so I had to set up two heavyweight tripods with cameras & len…