Adding the Human Touch

The Mallow project is drawing to a close now.

One of the important things we were asked to do was to show the sports complex as a living thing. This is a refreshing request from an architect. Usually, architectural photographs are devoid of any human presence.

There are a number of reasons for this, one of which is purely technical. Often architectural photography requires long shutter times. In the case of long exposures, that means that anything that is moving either doesn’t register at all, or shows up as a faint blur.

Below are two recent images taken for the project that show that the facility is indeed being used - one is more abstract than the other, but neither could have been produced without human activity in front of the lens.

Mallow GAA Sports Complex
(c) Roger Overall 2008

Mallow GAA Sports Complex
(c) Roger Overall 2008

High Ceiling

We were back at Mallow GAA Sports Complex today for some more shots. You might by now think that this is the only job I have on the go at the moment. Hardly. It wasn’t even the only shoot today. It was the third. It’s just a nice interesting job, hence the fuss over it on the blog at the moment.

I should point out that the facility has an indoor hurling pitch, which, if you’ve ever seen the game, is like saying you’ve got an indoor meteor shower - especially when you’ve got a group of boys let loose in it.

If you’re going to play hurling indoors you need a high ceiling and one that has to cover a huge expanse of space. Small wonder that my client, the architect who designed the complex, is keen to get some pictures of the hall. After all, if you can keep all of that metal suspended in air by the power of your calculator, you’d want a photograph of it too.

Here are some rough proofs from today’s shoot:

Mallow GAA Sports Complex
(c) Roger Overall 2008

Mallow GAA Sports Complex
(c) Roger Overall 2008

It’ll be quiet on the blog for the next week or so. I’m off to the Focus on Imaging tradeshow in Birmingham for three days next week, and then straight into a two-day catalogue shoot when I get back.

Architecture - Pt 2

We were back at the Mallow GAA Sports Complex today - this time for some interior shots.

The client is keen to include some human aspect in the photographs of the project, so for the shot here I asked Yestin to walk up and down a corridor. He leads an exciting life when he’s on assignment with me.

We still have a little bit of work to do on this project, so we’ll be going back for some additional exterior and interior shots in the course of next week. 

Mallow GAA Sports Complex - Interior
(c) Roger Overall 2008

Architecture - Pt 1

I have one of those Siberian-type winter hats. You know, the ones with flaps that come down over your ears. My three-year-old daughter says it makes me look like a “doggie” when I wear it. My wife says it makes me look like an idiot unfashionable.

I don’t care. It’s made from sheepskin and it is blissfully warm on a winter’s day. Also, it was a gift from my late sister.

I have a commission to photographer a sports complex and after months of waiting for bunting to come down, today was the day for the exterior shots. It was also bitterly cold. I wasn’t too fussed, mind. I had my hat.

Later in the week, I’m scheduled to do some interior shots at the complex and I’ll post some photographs when they’re done. For now, here are two of my favourite shots from today.

Mallow GAA Sports Complex
(c) Roger Overall 2008

Mallow GAA Sports Complex
(c) Roger Overall 2008

Friday

Back in Ireland on Friday last week, I had a couple of jobs lined up. One was a merchandising shoot for a university, the other an evening assignment for a catering company that was serving the meals at an 890-guest gala dinner at City Hall.

I won’t trouble you with a shot from the merchandising shoot as it wouldn’t get you very excited.

The shoot in the evening was quite the opposite. By the time I arrived at the venue for the dinner, about an hour and a half before kick-off, staff from An Excellent Choice Caterers were busy putting the finishing touches to tables and making sure advance wine orders were in right places.

Unless you are the son of a major deity, feeding close to 900 people at one sitting is a major logistical endeavour, so you can imagine the focused energy among the catering personnel. My brief was to capture the preparations and the dynamism of the staff, along with the grandeur and scale of the undertaking - and preferably not get in the way, well not too much at least.

Although I had my off-camera lighting gear with me, this wasn’t the place to be setting up lightstands, so I kept the flash on the camera, mainly using it as fill.

Here’s a trio of my favourite shots from the night:

Dinner Forest
(c) Roger Overall 2008

Wine Delivery
(c) Roger Overall 2008

Grand Space
(c) Roger Overall 2008

Thursday

After three days of solid shooting, Thursday last week was a travel day, quite a bit of which was spent at Heathrow waiting for an Aer Lingus jet to battle its way against huge winds from Cork to come and pick us up.

No photography, so here’s a picture I took last September on my way to Melbourne to visit my sister for the last time. You have to ask who was sitting there before I passed by. I’m just glad I wasn’t on the same flight as they were.

Cups and saucers
(c) Roger Overall 2007

By the way, here are two email responses from clients to the pictures that I shot for them last week:

“These are fantastic, Roger.”

“Thank you for sending through the images, they are fantastic. I have had a quick look at them and they are amazing.”

Makes me feel all cosy.

Wednesday

After the foodie shoots on Monday and Tuesday last week, it was back to humans on the Wednesday for an annual report for a leading marine mutual insurance company in London. This is a job I’ve done for a few years now and it’s always great fun. Mind you, the first half-an-hour of the shoot itself is normally incredibly hectic.

The shoot is scheduled each year to coincide with the January meeting of the mutual’s committee, which is made up of some very big hitters in the international shipping industry. These folks travel from everywhere to attend the meeting and have a heavy schedule to get through during the day, so they’re not keen on delays and unnecessary distractions.

The meeting starts at 10 o’clock in the morning and those attending start arriving from about half past nine onwards. That gives us half an hour to shoot upto six individual portraits of key committee members (two set-ups a piece); formal groupings if the right combinations of committee members are available; some informal groupings as they chat over coffee and pastries outside the meeting room; and a big set piece of the committee members present arranged according to a formal seating plan.

I have one camera ready to go where we’ve set up radio-triggered strobes for the portrait shots, and another with a medium, very fast telephoto for the informal pictures as the committee members mingle - I don’t like using flash for these shots, so in addition to the fast lens I use a high ISO, which adds to the atmosphere of the pictures. The formal committee shot is also planned and ready to go.

With the help of my contact at the insurer and the lady who runs their advertising and design agency, the whole thing runs really smoothly. So smoothly, that individual committee members have always found the time to chat while having their formal pictures taken, usually showing interest in the equipment, never giving any apparent signs that they feel they’re being rushed or pushed and pulled in all directions. As I say, we’ve been doing this for a couple of years now and have got the hang of it.

Once the formal group shot is taken and the doors to the meeting room close, the rest of the day is spent doing staff portraits and office shots. The office shots have in the past been in a documentary style. This year the client wanted a more stylized feel with off-camera flash. So we put a radio-triggered flash on a stand with an umbrella and worked our way through the floors in the building. Good fun, though less so perhaps for the unsuspecting staff commandeered to model.

Here’s one of my favourites from the day. The lighting scheme was very simple. The flash/umbrella combination on the stand was positioned to the right of the two lads and aimed directly at them. I dialled down the ambient exposure to darken the bookcase a little and set the flash for the correct exposure for the guys. It won’t get the awards judges to sit up in their chairs, but it will liven up a maritime P&I insurer’s annual report - though obviously not as much as a picture of ship on fire would. 

In the Library
(c) Roger Overall

Tuesday

Well, that was some week. Five shoots in five days in two countries. Don’t get me wrong - I love what I do, but it can be a mad rush at times.

Following the food shoot on Monday, I was booked to do a shoot for a catering company in London on Tuesday afternoon. Flights from Cork to London are two a penny (literally, as I’d booked well in advance) so I flew out at noon to be on site for the shoot at 16.00.

The brief was to shoot two set-ups: the first showing a child outdoors at a summer wedding enjoying a bag of goodies; the second showing one of the catering firm’s waiters working at a party. Both pictures were challenging. Especially, the outdoors summer bit. And the working with children.

The owner of the catering company had arranged for a friend to bring her three-year-old boy to the shoot, which was indoors at the business’s HQ in Twickenham. Unfortunately, Felix wasn’t really in the mood. And you can’t blame him. After all, the poor fella had to pose with a cake that he wasn’t allowed to eat and his mum had to keep pulling away from him. What sort of deal is that for a boy? In hindsight, the way the picture was shot didn’t help much either. I was towering over Felix to get a downward angle on the photograph and who needs a stranger and a sod-off big camera looming over you?

Having said that, he did produce a brilliant smile at one point and while the light wasn’t quite right, the smile sells the shot - and at this point we’d let him have the cake. Here’s a rough version of the picture:

Kid’s Fun Bag
(c) Roger Overall 2008

At this point, you’re probably wondering just how big a liar I am. “Indoors, Overall? What kind of fools do you take us for?”

Well, hand on heart, this picture was taken indoors. At least, most of it was. The grass was added later in PhotoShop and the whole image given a slightly warmer tone. The grass-rug transition still needs some work, but it should look pretty convincing by the time the image goes to the client.

The lighting was fairly straightforward. I bounced a flash off the ceiling to give a general bank of soft light. And a second flash with a CTO gel was fired just behind Felix to catch his head and hair, giving the impression of a low sun on a summer’s eve.

The second set-up was a bit more straightforward. We borrowed the kitchen extension of a friend of the catering company owner. The lighting is done on two planes. Firstly, the background was lit using a single flash with a blue gel. Then the foreground was lit separately by another flash with a CTO gel on it, to warm it up. In retrospect, I wish I’d fired a third flash from behind the waiter just to give a bit of rimlight around him and add to the party feel.

In all, this only took about 20 minutes to set up from scratch and after a couple of shots, I said I was happy that I’d got what I needed. The client was a bit surprised, but was delighted when she saw the picture on the back of the camera. It just goes to show that with a bit of planning, a shoot doesn’t need to take up a whole lot of time.

By the way, if you’re a photographer and really want to learn about off-camera lighting, go here: Strobist.

And did we eat the canapes and drink the champagne afterwards? Hell, yes. 

Serving Champagne
(c) Roger Overall 2008