Sometimes you have minutes to capture the right shots and this shoot at the end of the summer was a case in point. The Pro VC of the University of Leicester, Keith Schurer, and three members of the Leicestershire Asian Business Association were on very tight schedules but we needed to capture this photo opportunity marking the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding.

Better late than never… The Percy Gee building at the University of Leicester was officially opened recently with a high profile ceremony that included VC Bob Burgess, President of the NUS Aaron Porter, lots of mayors and mayoresses and the family of Percy Gee. The event focused on the unveiling of the Touching Pair statue by Deidrie Hubbard and the official opening plaque; and also included team shots of the those involved in the design and construction of the impressive building.

To mark its 125th anniversary celebration, Stoneygate College is holding a number of events including a Gala Ball and, just recently, a Victorian Apprentice competition. Teams of students in the Upper School were given Victorian toys to market and sell to the modern consumer. Apprentice finalist, Jo Riley and her fellow-Apprentice, Sandeesh Samra were advising the teams throughout the day and had the tough task of choosing the eventual winners. Oh and I took the pictures…

The Labour Market Studies event at the University of Leicester welcomed distance learning students at Doctorate level to a series of talks, workshops and seminars (I hope I’ve got that right!). They’d travelled from all parts of the globe and were studying a range of diverse subjects – the Barbados banking system since 1974 stuck in my mind. The event also included a talk by Vice Chancellor Bob Burgess on ‘Exploring Ethnography’, which was a real treat for someone that read his books as part of Sociology ‘O’ level in the dim and distant past…

I recently had a great day working with the charity Dore on their brand ePace. We spent the morning in a local school showing staff and children using the new product, followed by team profile shots and capturing general office activity for PR and marketing purposes. For these profile shots I used a two-light set up (main light with large softbox) and Lastolite Hilite.

I recently worked on a scaled down version of last year’s CLAHRC conference, this time held at the Henry Wellcome building at the University of Leicester. It was an interesting mix of talks, Q&A sessions and networking for the CLAHRC team, associates and review team.

I’m always keen to try different looks created by new lighting set ups. I was pointed towards this interesting blog by Swedish photographer, Stefan Tell (thanks Mark from Decoder) and had to experiment with the two-light set up with black background – with my first attempts above.

Revisiting this for a second session, we thought we’d made it even harder  by having Kate wearing a black dress and other dark clothes! Getting the separation of the head and clothes from the background proved to be the biggest challenge as there’s the balance between getting your separation and light seeping on to the background. So, it works for some better than others. You can see these and a few more in this gallery.

I think a more directional light (snoot or grid) is probably needed to ensure that the backlight remains on the head and shoulders. I shall try that next time round but for all of these I used the softboxes I have. This simple and effective look would certainly suit corporate profile shots…

The summer’s as good a time as ever to update your website so I’ve started the process by adding to some of the galleries. Good news is I’ve received model release for a few more school and nursery portraits so you now see more of a selection now from formal(ish) school studio shots to the natural nursery playtime images here.

The Events gallery has also been updated to include some recent work for the University of Leicester amongst others. I shall continue to add more work during holiday periods so do come back…

At the end of the last academic term, I worked on the Chemistry Activity Day at the University of Leicester – organised by the Colleges and University Learning Network. It was a great day designed to introduce college students to chemistry as a study subject and included an ester lab session, visual chemistry demonstration (with lots of smoke and bangs!) and business game for the competitive amongst them.

You can see a selection of the images here along with other recent shoots for the University.

Apologies for leaving it so long before another post but I’m sure my small pool of readers understand… I’m not long back from another trip with Mynt to the Bread & Butter fashion show in Berlin, which coincided with the two World Cup semi-finals. Mynt did another fabulous job on the Lee Cooper stand and relaunched the heritage British brand with the core denim range and brand extensions like fragrances, eyewear, swimwear and children’s collection amongst others. You can more images here. We’ve already had some good press coverage for the work at B&B on The Drum and hoping for more in the design and marketing press.

Bread & Butter itself was as inspiring as ever and I’ve returned with some fresh ideas for shoots should anyone be interested…