Giving It All

8 April, 2008

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

(c) Roger Overall 2008
(c) Roger Overall 2008


Evolution of a Photograph

29 March, 2008

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
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 Infusion 2 - (c) Roger Overall 2008
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' Tea Fruit Infusions 3 - (c) Roger Overall 2008
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
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.