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.