I had the privilege of seeing the refurbishment of the National Cycling Centre in Manchester. The brief was to capture the work so far by ISG on the new external steelworks and interior upgrades during a tour for the North West Construction Hub. So with health and safety paperwork completed and full PPE on, we stepped beyond the hoardings…
The second part of the brief was to capture two of their apprentices Lizzie and Caseigh as they chaperoned me around the site whilst undertaking their various roles.
Most of these shots were semi-staged meaning they had actual jobs to do and I photographed them doing it. I would then position them in the best light and try to convey the sense of scale of the project. Additional lighting was required in certain shots which gave me more creativity and scope in the time available. They seem to be really enjoying this exciting refurbishment project and clearly have a bright future within their respective roles in construction.
The full bank of edited images have been transferred and will be used by the client internally and externally across various media.
To see more of my construction work, click here.
Clients often come to me with a brief which they expect or hope to cover within a certain timeframe. It is my job to hit as many of these targets as possible but to also bring my own creativity to the brief. What does that actually mean though? In this case using education photography, here are some examples that were either on the list or have come about because of my own creative vision or that of the people I am working with. In an education setting there can be countless opportunities for this kind of creativity, sometimes it’s a brand new idea, other times it’s just down to effective communication and sometimes it’s just down to experience.
In this engineering facility, I was simply asked to capture a training session. It was pretty clear to see that there was lots of scope for capturing striking images using the colours and scale of the place. In this kind of situation my only struggle is knowing when to stop!
In other cases it’s about capturing angles and compositions that aren’t always obvious when putting the brief together. As with the previous point, these ideas don’t always work of course and sometimes the skill of the photographer is knowing when to stop and move onto something else. Different camera settings, lenses, lighting, poses, there are lots of other ways of bringing creativity to a brief and should be taken into consideration when planning to get a professional photographer in.
Back to education.
