West Yorkshire Commercial Photographer | Magazine, PR and Website Photography of Darrington Healthcare, Pontefract

People photography, especially natural and relaxed photography, are some one my of my favourite commissions. So it was my pleasure to travel to Pontefract in West Yorkshire recently to do some care home commercial photography with the residents of Darrington Healthcare’s luxury care home, Willow Park on Baghill Lane.   

 

A lot of care homes use stock photography to market themselves, but moving into a care home is a big decision and if I was helping a member of my family make that choice I’d prefer to see photos of residents in a real care home, to get a feel for a place and its atmosphere.    

The photographs I took are going to be used to market all of Darrington Healthcare’s homes, so needed to be a mix of portrait and landscape photography orientation, and be suitable for inclusion in adverts, in brochures and flyers, online on the company’s website and on the over-sized roadside hoardings around Elm Park Care Home, the group’s newest property, which is being built in Doncaster in South Yorkshire, and set to open in September 2014. 

Willow Park is a purpose built home set on three floors offering residential, nursing and dementia care, and is very popular with local families, constantly being at almost full occupancy.     

On the day I visited it was buzzing with residents, their visiting families and staff and I had taken the time to walk round introducing myself and getting acclimatised so by the time I got my camera out everyone was comfortable with having me around.   

I had also made sure that I had plenty of consent forms with me for people to sign. It’s really important that anyone who might appear in the resulting photos has given written permission, especially when the shots are to be used for marketing purposes.  

Some of the liveliest photos came from the coffee bar and lounges, where people were relaxing and chatting with friends, playing board games or watching TV. Darrington Healthcare’s philosophy is that it’s the staff who make a care home, so I was careful to include plenty of staff lifestyle photographs attending to the needs of residents, whether that was getting them a cup of tea, helping them out into the garden for some sun or organising a lively game of bingo.   

As luck would have it, the weekly visit from the hairdresser coincided with my visit, and the ladies were very good about me photographing them getting their hair done and catching up with local news, while upstairs in The Rovers bar and cinema room, I photographed two gentlemen enjoying a drink and engrossed in a huge jigsaw. 

The home itself is tastefully furnished, and the dementia suite in particular has been designed to help people with this difficult condition recognise the various furnishings that have been chosen to help them find their way around.

A traditional rocking horse, an old gramophone and some framed newspaper cuttings from 50 years ago all added up to photos that would reassure families about the attention to detail that runs through all of Willow Park.

As the sun broke through the clouds I was able to get some exterior photos of the home and its landscaped gardens, complete with red telephone box. Willow Park was designed by Newcastle architects Alston Murphy, and photographing some of the branding and architectural details made for some interesting angles.

I finished the photography session off by taking some shots of some of the cosy corners and subtle lighting that typify the home and give it the look of a five-star hotel rather than what most people would expect a care home to look like.  

That’s one of the things I like most about being a professional commercial and PR photographer working all over North East England and Yorkshire – being able to use my skills to take shots of people in everyday situations, and using great imagery to give a glimpse of the unexpected and beautiful. 

North Yorkshire Commercial and PR Photographer | Behind the Scenes Providing Top Quality Service

As a North East commercial and PR photographer people often ask me what goes on in the design studio, Stockton on Tees. Over 25 years as a professional photographer I specialise in commercial, editorial and PR photography I can tell you it’s added up to thousands of hours of work checking and refining images one by one. I can sometimes do nine jobs in one weekend, and that’s a lot of editing when you consider one hour’s photoshoot can sometimes equate to 2+ hours in the studio.

I’ve invested thousands in top of the range cameras, lights and video equipment - that paired with my fast 27' iMac and professional editing software so I have the best tools for the job.  I use Dropbox or Hightail for image sharing, coupled with a super-fast 50G broadband service, all backed up onto 3 terrabyte hard drives (x2 backup folders)

Editing photographs can be highly technical and I like to keep my skills updated, so each year I set aside some days in January/ February as my training and update months. That might also cover customer service training, business advice, technical training or an update on issues such as copyright and intellectual property – there is always something new to learn and I apply that same approach to my photography, to keep my work fresh.

In the studio I might carry out 20 editing commands on one image alone. I never batch process for example, which basically means dropping a set of images into one folder and telling the iMac to ‘sort the colour’, it’s just not my style as a professional photographer. Every one of my images are hand finished and assessed for quality.

When it comes to what and how to edit, a good commercial and PR photographer will be respectful of personal things such as birthmarks. It’s important not to tidy the personality away, although if a self-conscious subject with teenage acne asks me to smooth away their skin tone a little I would probably oblige! Seriously though, if I’m on a shoot such as the one I did recently photographing several Subway branches across Northumberland,Tyne & Wear and County Durham, I’ll edit out things like a stray piece of litter blowing around the street because my client wants crisp, clear shots that promote the brand and can be used in brochures, advertising and online and nothing can be allowed to spoil that.

Fashion photoshoots and food photography are just two sectors where retouching is demanded or at least positively encouraged in order to show the product off in the best possible light. The fashion shoot I did for a Teesside marketing agency needing a series of unique, high impact fashion photos to promote Middlesbrough Fashion Week’s ‘Fashion Rules’ events took many hours of painstaking editing back at my Stockton studio.

Many amateur photographers buy themselves a copy of Lightroom and let the plug-in software do the work for them, but there are many pitfalls for the unwary. Blowing out the whites in a shot such as a wintry snow picture is a common mistake made by people without experience and training. Once a shot has been over-exposed you can’t restore it so the picture is spoiled. 

It’s also possible to over brighten or add crazy saturated colours which is my pet hate. This might be just what you want if you are trying to create an artwork based on photography, but it’s not acceptable in areas such as corporate portraits or reportage photography where the colour and the image must be true as possible. The trick is knowing which detail to retain and which to ditch, and that all depends on the client and the assignment.

There’s no doubt that editing is a time consuming job but it’s part and parcel of being a professional photographer. I pride myself in turning jobs around quickly, but I’ve heard of people who take 10 days to deliver a simple 1 hour job.  That’s unacceptable in my book, particularly for commercial and PR shoots when images are often needed the same day for the north east press. 

Going too far by cloning and retouching is banned by most of the big media owners and publishers, who need their news photography to be completely authentic. Readers trust them to deliver honest images, and I know of no titles that would compromise the faith readers place in them for the trust and accuracy of their photography.  

Global newswire Associated Press recently fired Pullitzer prize winning freelance photojournalist Narciso Contreras for removing a rival photographer’s video camera (pictured above) from a Syria war image.  Narciso accepted he had done wrong but maintained he was doing his duty as a professional photographer by removing an item that could have distracted the reader but AP maintained that the cloning violated its ethical standards and cut its ties with the photographer, removing all his previous images from its database.

It goes to show that even in this weary world, there are still areas where when it comes to photography, editing  is not always required, and standards of truth and honesty apply.

Durham and Middlesbrough Editorial Documentary Photographer | Reportage Commissions

In my work as a North East photographer specialising in documentary photography, sometimes also called reportage photography, people often ask me what those terms mean.

The best way I can describe it is photography that records events and moments as they happen, rather than them being overly-directed or staged. Reportage is much more than simply strolling about with a camera, an event has to be able to flow and the photographer should adopt a fly on the wall approach to get the best results.

I’ve done hundreds of royalty and VIP photography photo-calls  and it wouldn’t do to be ordering people around in order to get the photos my client wants, instead I have to work with what’s in front of me and be quick and experienced enough to see the shot coming. There’s a saying in photography circles that goes ‘if you can see the shot, you’ve missed it’, and it’s very true.

Event photography over the north east is particularly challenging, with so many off the cuff moments going on simultaneously, plus a list of people who must be on the photos. Sometimes I’m asked to squeeze in a few head shots and corporate portraits of particularly key business people. The results are often used to promote future events so it’s important to capture the feel and atmosphere so that the photographs are equally at home in brochures, newspapers and magazines, annual reports, newsletters, online and a host of other uses.

Recent reportage photography commissions included a job at Durham's Gala Theatre, for Harlands Accountants. Another photography commission was in Middlesbrough Theatre documenting a stage dress rehearsal. All three clients had the same aim – to get a selection of good quality photos of events and performances that they can use to celebrate or publicise future events.

Middlesbrough’s Myplace centre provides leisure, social, advice and learning facilities for young people. The historic Custom House stands in the shadow of the Transporter Bridge over the Tees and has stood empty since the 1980s, but a £4m transformation by Middlesbrough Council has resulted in a world class youth facility and created a gift of a location for a photographer. The Council asked me to photograph the opening of the centre (pictured below), on North Street in Middlehaven, as well as library images of ‘feel good’ shots showcasing the refurbishment and the wide range of facilities, which young people helped to plan and design. 

Another commercial photography job with a completely different flavour was a VIP presscall and stakeholder event at Durham Tees Valley Airport. A large audience from Teesside and the surrounding area came together for the launch of the 'A world on your doorstep' marketing drive, to promote KLM’s three flights a day to Amsterdam and its connections from there to 80 destinations across the world.

My brief was to capture shots of the key speakers and circulate among the audience to get a set of photos that summed up the success of the event and could be used with press releases, online and in marketing materials. 

Every event demands a different focus, and for documentary photography the idea is to be unobtrusive and blend into the event, so I rarely use flash. I don’t want to get in the way of the action, particularly if I’m photographing key speakers on stage. I will often move around so people are comfortable seeing me before I pick up my camera and take a few shots. The only time I consider flash is if I have to photograph a big line up of people, say at an awards ceremony where I need more light, but even then I turn the setting to low light to minimise disruption.

At networking, or meet and greet, photography jobs I would use a wide angle lens and take long shots. The last thing people at a business event want is a camera in their face.

I enjoy being able to do things with today’s high-tech camera equipment that just were not possible five years ago. I’ve learned an awful lot in my 25+ years of professional commercial and PR photography in the North East & Scotland, and invested in thousands of pounds worth of gear because I want to get the best possible shot every time, for every client.