Tag Archives: interiors

Hope and charity

It’s extremely gratifying when a successful interiors shoot leads to much more regular work with a client; even more so when that client allows you a great deal of creative freedom and enables you to meet some of the most inspiring people in the UK as part of your work. This is the case with the Teenage Cancer Trust, who asked me to photograph their newly refurbished ward in Sheffield’s Weston Park Hospital, and have subsequently asked me back to work with them in Glasgow, Birmingham, Nottingham, and most recently at the 2016 Virgin Money London Marathon. Continue reading Hope and charity

Photo insurance

I recently finished another shoot for Burtt-Jones and Brewer (see Image bank) and the images are now available for me to share. These are from the London offices of a worldwide insurance company, who have a large hospitality area for clients and guests, an open plan office area, showers for their staff, and a well-equipped staff kitchen with coffee and water dispensers built into the worktops. Shot over three days, this was another thoroughly enjoyable and satisfying shoot, and I was assisted once again by the excellent Annabel. Continue reading Photo insurance

Case study: Luxury furniture showroom

This London based furniture showroom sells a range of high end Italian designed furniture. While I was at the shoot, a couple had flown over from Bermuda and were discussing their requirements with one of the staff. Many of the units on display here fetch four or even five-figure prices, so not the sort of thing you’d find in the January furniture sales as advertised on the TV after Christmas!

The London store is a franchise, operating under the name of the furniture manufacturer but being run as a separate company. They had shown me the catalogue produced by the Italian franchisor to give an indication of the sort of images they wanted. I composed the images to capture narrow colour palettes and desaturated the images very slightly to match the mood of the images from the catalogue I had been shown.

With hotel interiors, the emphasis is generally on the space, with the size of the space an important consideration, so wider lenses (around 16mm) are usually preferred. However when shooting furniture, you’re concentrating more on elements, so I stuck with a 24mm lens for most of the shots, shifting the lens slightly where needed.

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IMG_4505At times the angles needed meant shifting the lens horizontally to ensure the strict horizontal and vertical lines were retained, even when not aligned with the centre of the object:

IMG_4503I always take longer lenses with me to interior shoots as the detail shots can be as effective as the wider images:

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IMG_5448Of course for the shots of the whole showroom, it was necessary to go a bit wider, and from the elevated perspective I had to take full advantage of the shift capability of my 17mm lens:

IMG_4552As you can see from the plum-coloured pedestal, when shifted this much, the distortion can be quite extreme, so you need to be very careful using these lenses with elements that are visible at the extreme edges of the frame.

 

The story behind the photo: Going up

Spiral staircase at CitizenM London Bankside hotel
Spiral staircase at CitizenM London Bankside hotel (click image to view larger)

Once again this is an example of looking the other way. As part of my work as the London photographer for Hotel Tonight, I have been sent to some pretty spectacular hotels and apartments in and around the capital. One of the ones that impressed me most in 2012 was CitizenM London Bankside, part of a Dutch chain of hotels which feature identical budget rooms alongside highly decorated public areas. The Bankside hotel is in a converted office building and features automated check-in via computer terminals and a wooden spiral staircase from the ground to the first floor.

I love spirals, in nature or otherwise, so I set my camera on the tripod at the bottom of the staircase and pointed straight up. Craning my neck to view the display on the back of the camera, no doubt attracting puzzled looks from hotel guests and staff, I aimed the camera up along the axis of the spiral staircase towards the black globular lampshades hanging from the first floor ceiling, and ended up with a photo that is almost abstract, fooling the eye with the combination of sweeping curves and radiating wooden slats.

I’ve taken hundreds of photos of hotels over the past two years, but this one is probably my favourite still.