Subway Franchise Corporate and Marketing Photography: Cramlington, Washington and County Durham.

A top national marketing, PR and digital creative agency based in London contacted me recently, having seen my commercial photography on my website at www.davecharnleyphotography.com

The agency was in search of a cost effective North East commercial photographer to visit a group of Subway branches and update the company’s photo library.

The photography will be use for arange of PR and marketing purposes, in print and online.  My commercial photography brief was to visit stores in Cramlington in Northumberland, Washington in Tyne & Wear, and Spennymoor and Thinford in County Durham to get a range of interesting shots of the stores, in landscape and portrait, at different angles, and including interior and exterior shots.

Although all the stores share one distinctive brand, I needed to make sure the resulting images were individual and unique, showing Subway’s target audience and how the brand meets their expectations. As an experienced north east freelance commercial photographer with nearly 30 years’ experience it presented challenges, but ones that I was comfortable I could meet.

My timeslot to cover all four sites was between 10am to just after lunchtime. All of the stores were very busy, and as well as taking the photos I was kept on my toes getting signed approvals from all the customers in each store too. People think being a good commercial photographer is all about getting the perfect shot, and that’s part of it of course, but we put in a lot of extra work and behind the scenes effort that is all included in the price.

All of the staff at each branch made me very welcome, and had made sure the environment was clean, tidy and with well-stocked counters that showed off the background decor and Subway branding.  

I moved around each store making sure I got clean shots and met the brief, and I was really impressed how hard the ‘Sandwich Artists’ worked and how fast they were at serving customers. And all with a cheery smile too, which made for some great, relaxed shots of customers being served and sitting down to enjoy their food.

At the Washington site I also did some headshots of the franchisee, to give the marketing agency the rights shots for illustrating media case studies and news stories.

The Thinford site was particularly interesting to photograph, as it sits within a new garage forecourt environment and gave me a chance to illustrate both how the dual branding works and how a Subway store can sit comfortably within a larger store operation.

Once the shoot was over I went back to my Stockton photography studio to process the images and get them off to the agency within a couple of days. I pride myself on providing a fast, efficient service that delivers great results, and gives clients a flexible range of shots that can be used for a variety of purposes, whether that’s in print or online. It all adds up to helping them get maximum value from their photography budget.