On Location

For many jobs that involve photographing a large range of large products, it's usually easier for me to pack up all of my studio equipment and travel to where the products are. There are many advantages to this: I know that I'll have brought everything I could possibly need to complete the job, can you guarantee that you'll have brought every single piece of stock? What if something is marked or damaged, have you brought spares? What if ideas change during the shoot, have you brought everything for plan B?

With me always travelling to the job, an inevitable consequence is that I often find myself setting up in unusual places. It's easy if I'm visiting a factory or warehouse, plenty of room to use there. Othertimes I'm often shown a meeting room that's full of furniture and the only solution is to take everything out and leave a corridor full of chairs while I work. Sometimes the space I work in might not at first be obviously suitable to set up a mobile photographic studio and the video below is one of those instances.

The first option I was given was the reception area. A low ceiling, pedestrian traffic, a staircase and too much furniture made it not an ideal choice. A quick walk through the warehouse revealed a space inbetween the fork lift truck and the American sedan that would be ideal. As much ceiling height as I could ever want, the ability to shoot from as far back as I needed and I wasn't going to be in the way of the day to day operation of the company.

The company supplies stainless steel catering sinks. Plenty of reflections to deal with and two people required to move them onto and off the set. The final photographs are cut-outs but all of the clean reflections were produced in camera. They are currently being used on the company website and in product specification leaflets.