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Oktra Interior Design Photography

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.

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Children’s Portfolio Photography

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

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English Heritage’s Corbridge Hoard

Corbridge Hidden Treasures

You may know this already but until I was briefed for this shoot, I had no idea that Corbridge, just outside the pretty cobbled town centre, has an excavated Roman settlement managed by English Heritage. As well as the architectural remains to walk around there is a display of the largest of Hadrian’s Wall’s collections. Its exhibited together with a 2000 year old ‘hoard’ of buried treasure. The excavation here in 1964 found one of the most significant historical findings; a Roman soldier’s belongings including armour, tools, weaponry, wax writing tablets and papyrus, (an ancient writing paper). Essentially it was a Roman time capsule!

These discoveries were found buried in an iron-bound, leather-covered wooden chest which was likely to have been left by it’s owner to collect at a later date but never was. Instead the well preserved items are exhibited at the English Heritage Centre in Corbridge in a colourful, interesting and atmospheric exhibition.

Studio hb, a London based Graphic Designer, created the exhibition’s design concept using detailed spot lighting, careful symmetry, dramatically suspended heavy stone work and a colour scheme inspired by the orange and blue-green beads of the Roman jewellery exhibits. I was briefed by Studio hb’s Helen to capture the design detail of coloured lined timescales, debossed typography (echoing roman etchings in stone) and the story telling layouts of tiny and delicate artefacts.

For anyone interested in finding out more about Hardian’s Wall or the Corbridge Town Roman settlement information can be found on The English Heritage website here

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Mothers Day Online Gift Ideas

Earlier this year I shot a series of photographs of jewellery for Pretty Serendipity in my Newcastle Photography studio here in the city centre. I thought it might be nice to shout about them on the run up to Mothers Day as these are gifts that can be made and posted to your Mumma direct- no shops, no risky business, and certainly no forgetting about her in these crazy times. My Photo Gift Voucher packs can also be purchased as a Mothers Day Gift to use when all isolation settles down and you feel safe back in the outsidyways world! More info on various packages on my pricing pages here

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Below are a selection of shots used on the updated website and a screen shot showing how my new jewellery product photography images look on the model and side by side with their own product shots. The products are beautiful and these new model shots help give a sense of size and scale that Pretty Serendipity needed. I loved working with their team, their gorgeous products AND they gave such kind feedback. I shall be looking forward to working together again in the future. Their products can be seen here Mothers Day Gifts for photoshoot in newcastle professional photography studio for all the family

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Dylan Thomas, Love the Words

So here is another set of images recently captured for my London based client Studio hb who specialise environmental graphics for exhibition spaces. The exhibition is a recently refurbished permanent exhibition at the Dylan Thomas Centre in Swansea. It is fully interactive with touch screens, spy holes, neon, sound and projections together with beautiful typefaces, a minimal colour palette and cartoon-like illustrations.

The designers have chosen to create a space that is low lit, playful and intriguing and so my environmental photography needed to capture this atmosphere and the design details. The photographic brief was to document the main elements of the environmental design, much like the David Bowie is and Olympic Journey 2012 exhibition where I photographed close ups on print finishes and materials, video projections, text and creative interactive elements.

Photography tips. How to!

How do you shoot correctly exposed images in low light exhibition spaces?

So to give advice on how to capture an exhibition in this type of a low light environment, because the subject matter is stationery you can take down your shutter speed really low without any risk of movement blur providing you use a tripod. So a tripod is a fundamental bit of kit for this type of shoot. The ISO can be anything up to 1600 and maybe higher to 2500 with a camera body that copes well in low light but mainly use a tripod so you can maximise light instead with a very slow shutter speed like 10 or under. This way you avoid the grain often present in a slightly under exposed image shot at a high ISO.

If you are creating atmosphere, be careful to note the level of light in the room and avoid over exposer as you will lose atmosphere with a brightly lit image. You may also like to use a remote to avoid any camera shake when pressing the shutter. Spot lights may cause issues with over exposure so keep an eye out for highlight warnings in your camera as you shoot. Below are samples of the various areas of the exhibition with many different lighting challenges with projections and spots.

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