commercial photographer north east Archives - Page 2 of 10 - Sarah Deane Photography Studio Newcastle

YMCA’s Urban Mushrooms Product Photography

10 July 2020/0 Comments/in Assorted, Commercial, food and drink photography /by Sarah Deane

Growing For Good

You may remember seeing some interesting pictures of mushroom kits on my social media just before lockdown, it was a really fun and dynamic commission by YMCA Newcastle’s Calvin Bateson. Calvin is Marketing Communications Officer at YMCA Newcastle and he got in touch with me needing product photography at my studio in Newcastle for the Urban Mushroom project. Urban Mushrooms pioneers ethical and sustainable food production and provides jobs and training to disadvantaged young local people thanks to investment from Sage Foundation and Social Investment Business Group. Production was booming before lockdown and the team needed updated imagery for their website.

The enterprise has been developing it’s tried-and-tested approach to urban farming here in Newcastle with used coffee grounds to produce new, speciality hot pink oyster mushrooms to join their pearl-grey mushrooms in the fresh cap and grow-at-home kit product range. They’re also developing dried mushroom products along with a line of speciality powders and salts. Urban Mushrooms are also supplying ‘chog’ (or stalks) of the oyster mushrooms to Field and Forrest- a producer of vegan convenience food as a meat-alternative. Many of the products supply our local restaurants in Newcastle for high end dishes and creative menus.

Previous to this Urban Mushrooms product shoot, I had captured documentary images of the mushroom production, portraits of the youth employees and volunteers on the urban farm. The brief for me this time was to capture images of the produce and so Calvin arrived with a basket of the weird and wonderfully shaped, colourful mushrooms they grow at the YMCA Mushroom farm. Below are a select few images from the shoot that show the mushrooms ‘in situ’ of food prep, display and macro close up shots of the fungi as the main event! Just feast your eyes on this lot of fun-gi! Soon to be on the Urban Mushroom’s website.

Oktra Interior Design Photography

1 July 2020/0 Comments/in Commercial /by Sarah Deane

Okra London designs and fits up North

During the tumble weed times of frozen lockdown I was commissioned for an exciting interiors photography job that fitted the ‘safe shooting’ requirements perfectly. Essentially a soon to be occupied office building in Newcastle’s NE12. It was a brand new beautiful office design and fit by Okra Design in London for their expanding client (who wants to remain private) with an HQ in London. They had worked to a really tight schedule with design and fit then the timescale shrank on the job drastically as COVID struck. All was completed smoothly on time and the finished results were crisp, professional, light and airy, a positive environment for the new Northern team. Oktra got in touch with me having viewed my website’s Office Interiors Photography (link here) and felt my Newcastle location and photography style was a good fit for their brand and so asked me to capture the office on handover day last month. I was so keen to shoot again, I could have actually kissed them (although strictly I couldn’t in the middle of a pandemic….. and they are 280 miles away, but I am sure you can imagine my joy)!

So the brief was to capture clean descriptive photos of the office’s full height windowed perimeter, the space, light and enormity of the building to create an interior photography portfolio for this design. The photography was briefed to cover the layout planning and details like wall graphics, bespoke brand coloured furniture and organised open planned spaces within the huge expanse of space. There was a fabulous interior living wall in the breakout area that Oktra wanted photos of next to modern furniture and finishes. Images with perspective were important to show the scale and there also was a secure bullet proof area that had it’s own generator in the case of a power cut. It was pretty a impressive piece for Oktra’s portfolio so see what you think below. I have also placed some screen shots of the current Oktra website displaying my images and you can see their work here.

Children’s Portfolio Photography

15 May 2020/0 Comments/in Fashion, Portraits /by Sarah Deane

Meet Millie!

You can’t help but fall in love with Millie when you meet her. She is full of life, sweet natured and has a little twinkle in her eye which is always visible, never waning once throughout our recent shoot. Millie, 8 is a child model, dancer, singer, swimmer and all round ace performer.

She came to the studio in January this year with her Mum Jo, a colleague of mine from my Venture Portrait in Gosforth, Newcastle in the mid 2000’s and who owns the amazing Decote Dance group in Whitley Bay. Together as a team we created a really varied and colourful portfolio. We wanted photography that had a fashion angle but with personality and character combined. We went for lots of different looks, some edgy and sporty, some sweet and feminine and some fun and energetic. I wanted to capture highlights of Millie’s personality, paired with the outfits Jo brought along. These elements together with my suggestions on composition and lighting created a fantastic fresh new portfolio for Millie and her Mum. It was a really creative and fun shoot!

Many children start early with their model portfolios, attending shoots nationally for work and gaining experience with different photography studios and production companies. It can be a lot of fun if you enjoy it like Millie does and her brand new bank of images now means that she can enter competitions in all areas of her expertise, gain agency interest and refresh her social media online presence.

Below are a selection of Millie’s model photos below, so see what you think. If you know a child who’d like to try it out, my studio is a super friendly place to start out and I will always help you and your child feel comfortable and at ease. You can find more information, client reviews and portfolio pricing if you visit this page on my website

YMCA Portraits

11 May 2020/0 Comments/in Commercial, Portraits, PR and Editorial /by Sarah Deane

Just before lockdown I worked with the YMCA in Newcastle on their Urban Mushroom project, capturing photos of the grow-your-own kits they sell made from recycled local coffee grains. It’s a genius idea and more mushroom images will be shared when they go live. Part of the photography brief was to capture urban portraits in Newcastle city centre of the local youth that the scheme employs.

The YMCA are an exciting new client for me and one of the fist things I discussed when meeting Calvin, the Marketing Officer at YMCA Newcastle, was the infamous song! I was curious to know whether it felt relevant to the work they do now. I’d thought the memorable 1970’s Village People’s flamboyance was worlds apart from what the charity does today but did you know that the song was celebrating the YMCA help given to young gay men who were rejected by family and turfed out of home? The YMCA charity gave accommodation to those homeless young men and so Calvin explained the history of the organisation was well respected in this song. Now the YMCA supports both young men and women in all areas of life and Urban Mushrooms is an important employment scheme in Newcastle’s YMCA.

My main focus for the portrait shoot was the amazing Wilton who is employed by the Urban Mushroom scheme. He was a super star and surprisingly tolerant of me pointing a camera in his direction for several hours! I got some atmospheric shots of him and YMCA staff too by simply crossing the road from their premises and using the alleyway next to the Tyneside Cinema. So many brick textures, backdrop colours and lighting styles in that one street!

The brief was to capture a more relaxed expression, so not necessarily smiling as this can appear unappealing, staged and possibly unrealistic to the younger target market the YMCA want to attract. We also discussed the use of dimension and angles to fit with the YMCA style of photography and branding currently on their website. It was a clear and creative brief (the best of course) and the mood and expression needed to be just right. It was also a different type of shoot for me as I usually encourage people to smile although I did get a few smilers at the end though. Obviously!

For more information on the YMCA Newcastle and it’s work click here

Science Museum’s ‘Robots Then and Now’

29 April 2020/0 Comments/in Commercial, PR and Editorial /by Sarah Deane

Robot Faces: Exhibition Photography

This exhibition at the Science Museum explored the 500 year history of humanoid robots. It opened in 2017 in London, and in 2018 Life Science Centre in Newcastle was lucky enough to host it before it toured internationally, this year in Berlin.

If you love a robot face, particularly the 1970’s 80’s toys like me, then you’d have been in for treat at this exhibition! It was a joy to capture these photos for the Life marketing team, the colourful lighting, cartoon style designs and the amazing interactive technology of the moving and talking machines!

The exhibition graphics are the design work of the amazing London based Environmental Graphic Designers, Studio HB, for whom I have captured images for the David Bowie, Winnie the Pooh, Dylan Thomas and most recently the Corbridge Hoard exhibitions to name but a few.

These colourful robot photos are the perfect antidote to a grey day or a crazy pandemic lockdown…. just look at their funny googley eyes! If you wanted to find out more about the fantastic PR stunt that I captured to promote the exhibition’s visit to Life then you can read a blog I wrote in 2018 on this link here.

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