The commercial work that I had planned to get together and develop this year was unfortunately hindered by Covid-19. I managed to get one commercial shoot done over the summer and the wedding that I have booked is now rescheduled for the end of May which is good. Over the past few months, I have been able to work on some collaboration projects with friends for their various creative outlets which have given me some good collaborative and multidisciplinary skills.
Work With Life Space Cabins
Life Space cabins are a returning client of mine. They are a relatively new company that design and build bespoke cabins in the South West and afar. They had recently finished a build and asked me to photograph it for their marketing, social media and website use. I completed two shoots for them, daylight on and an evening shoot. This is a selection of the best photographs that I took. I struggled to photograph the interior of the cabin as it was quite small, I was using the widest lens I could get away with, a 14mm, which just about worked. However, in the future, I think I would use an 18mm or 20mm and focus on the detail of the interior a bit more than capturing wide interior shots. I am happy with the exterior shots and the edit that I placed on top of them once the images were taken. I think that these are strong portfolio images and will help me in the future gain more further property work. The images were also in the April edition of the Self Build Design Magazine which made the shoot feel well accomplished to see my photographs out there.
Project Youthopia Collaboration Project with Matthew Wong
The Project Youthopia short film was a collaboration project with my friend Matthew Wong. It was something that he asked me to work on with him as he wanted to mix video and photographs together. Working collaboratively is something that we do together, most of the time for fun so it was nice to work on a little project for a company to use on their Instagram. This was not a paid gig and I wanted to do it to add to the portfolio of work that I have done. This is the sort of thing that I post on my personal blog so people can see the project that I am working on outside of my fine art and commercial practice.
Headshots for Kate McDouall
Kate McDouall is a good friend, Singer and Songwriter. Kate, Matthew and I made a music video for one of her latest songs but as she has not released it I am not going to share it here. As well as the video, I took some headshots for her to use as Instagram posts or a photo for an album cover. Kate wanted me to shoot the photographs on film so this was the first time that I tried my home film developing set up and I was very happy with the outcome of the images. In a later date, I would like to build up a commercial website which these photographs will hold a home to. I would like to offer a commercial service for working on film as I think it is a niche market which some people like.
Advertising Shots for Adz Bheda's Instagram campaign
Here are a few photographs that I took for my good mate Adz Bheda. He was running an Instagram campaign for a watch company and he asked me to take some photographs for him to use. I don't usually take portraits, especially ones that are focused on selling a product so that was a little bit of a challenge for me. I had to think about how I wanted Adz to be positioned so that I could still capture the small watch on his hand without it getting lost in the frame. Overall, I think I managed to capture it well without losing the watch in the frame of the image.
Marketing Photographs for Hembury Homes
Now the world has opened up a little. I am finding that a few more photography jobs are falling into my inbox and this is a recent shoot that I did for Hembury Homes. This was most probably the first job that I have had where I have had a clear brief to follow. I quite enjoyed that as I had direction with my work day and it gave me the creative freedom within the kind of photographs that they wanted me to capture. Hembury homes is a property developing company. They wanted me to go to one of their new sites to take some progress photographs and they will later want me to return to show how far they have got. As well as this, they wanted me to photograph the local area around Tiverton where the site was. It was a good day of shooting and I had a lot of freedom with the photographs that I took so I did not feel pressured for the job. I enjoyed travelling around a new place and documenting the local area so it was only a bonus that I was getting paid for it.
Going Forward...
This past year has very much been strange in every aspect possible and it has most definitely affected the way in which I was wanting to work commercially. My plan was that over the past year I was going to be able to build a clientele and develop my commercial practice. However, because of the restrictions the world has placed on us I have not been able to do what I was planning. My commercial work is now running a year late but I don't necessarily think that is a bad thing. Over the past year I have been able to research and plan how my photographic future is going to look. Now the world is opening up again I have a little bit of work coming in and I am looking forward to building my commercial work up further. In the next few months I have a few more shoots for Hembury homes, a couple of music shoots and a wedding. Once uni has finished for the summer I then intend on working on my marketing and bringing in more commercial work. This will then build my foundations for a sustainable income once I have graduated uni.