Travelling round the North East as a commercial and PR photographer means one day photographing cities and towns like Newcastle or Middlesbrough, and the next photographing events and scenes in small villages spread around Teesside, County Durham and Tyne and Wear.
A London-based publishing company who found me via my website at www.davecharnleyphotography.com commissioned me for a commercial photography job at a plastics warehouse in Northallerton, before asking me to document scenes across a series of Post Offices from Alnwick in Northumberland down to Trawden in Lancashire.
I found quite a contrast between the atmosphere in a brisk Christmas pop-up Post Office on Northumberland in Newcastle to photographing one in a rural village with just a handful of local residents, where the Post Office really is the heart of the community.
Most people think of the Post Office as somewhere where you can buy stamps and post parcels, but I was amazed by the variety of services they now offer.
Today’s Post Office is a
dynamic operation with a network of 11,500 branches where people can make e-top
ups, pay bills, apply for licenses and passports, drop off dry cleaning,
collect parcels and access a host of other support services.
Photographing in the smaller
branches was interesting, everyone was keen to chat and of course keep up with
the local gossip. As I chatted to staff and customers while I worked, I
realised that people really value their local Post Offices for the wide range
of services offered, all delivered with friendly, personal service.
The brief was to photograph different scenarios from press, adverting, reportage and PR photography in each North East and Yorkshire branch, which threw up its own photographic challenges, and I used all of my skills as an ex-press photographer used to working fast and photographing everything from concerts, charity events to corporate portraits.
The job involved a lot of
travel time between branches, but driving through beautiful photographic landscapes of Lancashire, County Durham, North Yorkshire and Northumberland was no hardship. Leaving my base in
Stockton to get to Trawden near Skipton threw up a spooky moment as I passed my
sister in law, who lives in nearby Silsden, on a winding country road. The look
on her face as I waved was a picture and she was obviously surprised to see me
so far from home.
The photos I took across a range of north east branches will be used for internal publications, annual reports, magazines and newsletters, and I was pleased to have been the commercial photographer asked
to deliver a slice of life behind the counter, to keep staff and other
stakeholders up to date with news, and encourage people to consider a career in
this great British Institution.
No comments:
Post a Comment