February 25 News

Hi everyone. Hope you’re all surviving the winter weather. I’ve had a busy January and am now looking forward to Spring. February tends to quieten down and is a good time to catch up on all those endless office jobs and never ending to-do lists.
Here is a flavour of what I was photographing this time last year.

I love these portraits for SMRS in Manchester!
SMRS, a culture, brand and communications business, are usually sending me on corporate photoshoots all over the country to photograph their clients. However this time the camera was turned on themselves! I had fun photographing about 20 employees and they didn’t need much encouragement to be themselves and let their personalities shine! I shot using a plain white background and then art director John P worked his magic to transform the background into lots of different versions of their brand identity. I was thrilled with the results 🙂

My last visit to Stockport Grammar was to do a day of education promotional photography. SGS is always a pleasure to visit and the pupils are often keen to get involved. Swimming is one of those tricky subjects to shoot, where I can often suffer from ‘lens steam-itus’ and the very real danger of getting wet legs for the rest of the day, not to mention nearly passing out from the heat. I do like a challenge though!

Over to Salford to photograph the North of England mentees for the Women in Film and TV of 2024. The mentoring scheme is very prestigious. After chatting to these seven women, I realised what a hugely talented cohort they are. I photographed them on their induction day at the university of Salford’s School of Arts, Media and Creative Technology and I loved it there. I wanted to stay. It felt like I was back at university (but a very souped up modern version!).

This was a busy half day photoshoot for Greater Manchester Institute of Technology. GMIoT commissioned me and videographer Abbie, to capture students at Bury College Health and Digital Centre. I had a willing bunch of volunteers and support from the college to capture images of the students interacting with each other and the equipment in order to illustrate their learning and the modern facilities on offer.

Lastly, Wilson Cooke asked me to visit Garic’s site all the way up in Falkirk to capture imagery to use for their marketing. My brief was to capture their people working away doing their everyday jobs, servicing, maintaining and cleaning the mobile welfare units and making them ready to go out into the world again. Unsurprisingly, Scotland in January provided us with gale force winds and rain. As such, we had to brain storm and come up with ways to shoot the outdoor scenes inside! One of my good friends happens to live in Falkirk so it was a brilliant opportunity for a long overdue visit and a good pub meal.

Bye for now, enjoy the rest of February.
Claire