Giving It All

It’ll be quieter than usual on the blogs for the rest of the week. I’m in Dublin on an intensive business referral training course, followed by a two-day business referral conference. 

Why? Because a good slice of my business comes through word-of-mouth referrals and I want to get a whole lot better at generating and encouraging those referrals. I also want to get a whole lot better at providing referrals for others - after all, giving creates a desire in the receiver to return the favour. Ultimately, you end up in a self-perpetuating spiral of giving and receiving - and the way I see it, that’s a good thing. (Listen, I was born in the 60s, so something’s gonna rub off).

Marcel Mauss wrote a book called The Gift about how the exchange of gifts builds bonds between humans - a form of social glue, if you will - and it’s a principle that works well in business.

Anyway, that’s what I’m up to for the rest of the week and into the weekend. 

In the meantime, here are two photographs from a food shoot that I did earlier today for one of Cork’s shiny new prestige hotels. The lighting was very simple and a good example of the less-is-more adage. 

In both instances, the plate is being lit on the right by a large window in the hotel’s restaurant. The light is very diffuse and soft because the window is frosted glass. On the other side of the plate, I put up a large silver reflector to bounce light back. And that’s it. The dappled background in one of the pictures was provided by a crushed-velvet curtain about two metres behind the table. 

Keeping with the theme of the post, it’s only fair to point out that the assignment came to me through a referral from a printer buddy who is currently working with the hotel and recommended me for the job.

(c) Roger Overall 2008

(c) Roger Overall 2008

Evolution of a Photograph

It’s great getting the shot first time, but it doesn’t always happen. Sometimes, a photograph develops over a couple of shoots with feedback from the client. This recently happened with a commission from Cork-based tea producer Barry’s Tea.

The brief was to photograph a series of new packaging designs for use in printed material aimed at retailers rather than consumers. Barry’s had produced similar material in the past and asked me to deliver a result that would keep all of the current and past material in synch.

The first shoot produced this image for one of the new ranges:

Barry’s Tea Fruit Infusions - 1
(c) Roger Overall 2008

On reflection, the client said that they would prefer to see all of the boxes standing. They also asked for a different colour background in line with the dominant fruit colour and for the ginger to be removed from the shot.

No problem. Here’s the second photograph:

Barry’s Tea Fruit Infusions - 2
(c) Roger Overall 2008

A little more discussion followed, and the client decided that they preferred a green background after all, which gave us this photograph:

Barry’s Tea Fruit Infusions - 3
(c) Roger Overall 2008

All along we had also been shooting versions of the photographs without the fruit and ultimately this is the image the client chose:

Barry’s Tea Fruit Infusions - 4
(c) Roger Overall 2008

The lighting set-up was fairly simple. The boxes were lit from above with a large diffuse light created by bouncing a strobe off the white ceiling of the studio. A second light with a grid spot was fired from the left of the frame creating some fill and shadows. I lightened the shadows a bit by placing a silver reflector to the right of the boxes. Lastly, the coloured backgrounds were created using a third flash with a colour gel aimed at a white backdrop about three metres behind the boxes.

All the fruit made for some terrific smoothies afterwards.