Manor House Wildlife Park

After a busy day shooting a wonderful wedding at Manorbier Castle, it was a lazy Sunday exploring the local area. Manor House Wildlife Park was a bit of a surprise really, cheap to get in, the animals seemed really well cared for and you could feed the Wallaby's and walk amongst the Lemurs. A really relaxing day and a beautiful part of Wales.

http://www.manorhousewildlifepark.co.uk/

A shot to remember my workspace

Shot of me at my desk at Newcastle College during my Foundation Degree. Having wall space and the ability to surround myself with my work has been an integral part of my development and has really given me an appreciation of actually printing photography, giving it the chance to live as an image on a wall space. So much photography never makes it from a file into print these days, and for me, filling these walls, changing them over and having those photographs to think about and discuss with piers has improved my eye and my understanding of the photographic medium.

Until it's in print, it's just not a photograph.

photograph by Adam Gruning

Signature Hair shoot #3

More shots to come but initial results are very satisfying indeed. The shoot was to me, the model of how such a shoot should go. We had the whole day in the studio and models were ready one at a time, allowing us to take our time, let the models relax and start to enjoy the experience. In the past we have had up to 16 people in there, crowding around making inexperienced models feel much more self conscious and putting the wrong sort of pressure on everyone. This shoot was controlled, we largely had no more than 6-8 people present and all of those people were relevant and important to the shoot. All of this made a huge difference to how people felt about the day and that then came through in the work. Not to say that it lacked pressure, a shoot like this is very heavy on pressure, constantly keeping everyone's energy levels up, giving repeated reinforcement to the models, getting everything done, dealing with problems and many more factors. The pressure is tangible, but it is the right sort of pressure, the exciting sort that comes from being on-stage and responsible for what is happening, the sort of pressure that you have no choice but to overcome, and in the end I am left buzzing, excited, thrilled, a little out of control in my head with how it all went and how pleased both myself and the client are with the results.
At the end of the shoot, we did an additional shoot with the last model and her partner who are in a local R'n'B band, shots from which will follow. A big congratulations to all involved, all three models did us and the client proud, the staff from Signature Salon, Hartshill, were wonderful to work with, created stunning hair for me to photograph and we all worked like a well oiled machine, but a smiling and happy machine. Thanks to Amy and Lorna for sorting the studio out for this shoot and the Signature guys. Getting out into either the countryside or a derelict urban location would add to our range of options and I have had discussions with Signature towards this.
These images have been through Lightroom only for a quick balance, they will only go through Photoshop for a full edit when the final shots have been chosen for competition.

Product Shoot for Optimise Automotive

These are some of the shots taken in the studio (28/04/11) for Optimise Automotive who wish to replace the photography on their website and update their imagery to a more professional level. The backgrounds are yet to be fully matched up, white-wise, but that will be completed when the last shoot is done and the whole range can be tweaked to match perfectly. I am happy with the results as they stand though, having never photographed product before, though a lot of online and practical research was done in the week leading up to this job.

You can see the background difference between the shots above and below, this is easy to correct in post processing. Some product was shot on the table-curve and some at floor level with different light sets which has created the difference. Small objects are best shot on the table at the three quarter point. 

It made a great difference to have the client involved in the shoot so that he could decide exactly what level of shadowing (or none) that he wanted for the photographs. On the shots below it was important to set the camera on a sturdy studio tripod, fixed in position. The first piece was placed and framed in the camera to be cropped square in post processing, then the focus was set and left alone. Tiny pen marks on the floor gave us the fixed angle that the images needed. Lights were set and the production line started as there were many of these pieces to shoot.