2012 is off to a great start and we've had a very busy January so far. We've also got some nice work in the diary for February so that keeps the wolf from the door for another month!!. We're also about to start work on a brand new Redshift Photography website which is long overdue to be honest. The current website is looking dated and we can't update the gallery anymore so the content is old too. In the past we've had crazy prices quoted for a new site but I've finally found a company that can offer us a reasonable price for a site based on a Wordpress template. As soon as it's up and running I'll post a link to it here in the blog.

Just before Christmas I took a portrait of Rowena Preiss (Creative Director) of Philips Lighting on location in London. We met at he Hospital Club in Soho for the shoot and took some pictures in the art gallery area. I've worked with Rowena before and she's a really lively and energetic person so I knew we'd get some good shots. I've included my favourite picture from the shoot in the blog.

Last week I had a shoot at the new Gordon Ramsay restaurant near St Pauls in London called Bread Street Kitchen.I was commissioned by Hoare Lea Lighting to capture the effect of the lighting throughout the restaurant. The functional lighting was taken care of by some LED spotlights on a grid system up in the ceiling and the decorative lighting consisted of reclaimed glass pendants and Anglepoise table lamps. I love the staircase lighting too where the warm continuous LED lighting really accentuated the gold metal finishes.

Another fun shoot I did last week was for JCC Lighting at the Marussia F1 team HQ in Banbury. JCC have supplied LED lighting products throughout the factory including the downlights in the main reception and it was really interesting to see the cars being hand built in the workshop and also to see the model shop and other technical areas. The LED light panels in the office and corridor areas looked superb and provided a beautiful soft light for photography. These panels would make great studio lights in their own right!.


I had another shoot for Hoare Lea last Wednesday at a beautiful office building in Holborn featuring a huge atrium area and I've got another shoot for them tonight in Canada Water at the new library thats just opened there. I'll post some pictures in the blog next week.

Happy New Year everyone!.

We're back at work today after a fantastic Christmas break so we're all refreshed and ready to go.

Me with Grumpy Mug

The diary is looking pretty busy already for January with three more night shoots in London with Architainment, two interiors to photograph for Hoare Lea and two jobs in Manchester - one a private house and the other a Herts Rent-a-car office. We've also got a couple of exciting video jobs bubbling away so it should be a good start to 2012. It takes the pressure off knowing that we've got some work in the bank so to speak and we're lucky to be in such a good position.

Philips Lighting Standard

During the office party we had a secret Santa and I was delighted to get a large "grumpy old git" mug with a rant about Reality TV printed on it. I drink loads of Tea and I hate Reality TV with a passion so it was a perfect pressie. Here's a picture of me with it taken by Ani!.

During the past year we worked on the new Philips magazine called The Lighting Standard edited by Jane Hart at Philips HQ in Guildford. Here's a page of the brochure with some of our pictures in place. These were taken at Bemco wholesalers in London last summer. This type of reportage work is great fun and I really enjoyed working on the Lighting Standard. I'm hoping to get involved in any future issues planned for 2012 too.

I'm off now to meet Pete my partner in Inverse Square Media to discuss taking the video company forward this year. There's definitely a growing demand for video content and Inverse Square did really well last year despite being a new start up company with no advertising or promotion other than via word of mouth. We've produced some very neat desk calendars to give away so if you'd like one please drop me a line and we'll post one out to you!.

Happy New Year once again - lets hope 2012 is a good one for us all.

Here's a copy of a direct mail campaign which we shot in the summer for one of our best clients, Bupa Care Homes.  We had great fun on the day shooting the models who were all actual members of staff who work in the roles they portrayed in the photographs.  Ani came along to do the make up and we also arranged for a hairdresser to attend.  It made the staff feel special and we really enjoyed the day.

BUPA Mail Out

It's always great to see how our pictures are used by the client and graphic designers.

Philips Corporate Brochure Cover Shot

Another big shoot we had this year was for Philips where we set out to capture a front cover shot showing a happy family out in the open enjoying some fresh air in Battersea Park. We had a fairly big team in attendance on the day with the actual models, an art director and his assistant, two marketing people from Philips and myself. You need to buy a permit to shoot in any of the London parks and we had half a day booked for this shoot.  We were all there at 8.30am ready to start but unfortunately the model children didn't arrive until 11.30am as they'd come from Birmingham and had only allowed 2 hours for the trip!.
Anyone that knows London traffic will tell you that it takes over an hour to get across to Battersea from the West End so two hours from Birmingham was a bit of an under estimation to say the least. Apparently their Satnav told them they'd be on time!!. Anyway we pulled it off and here's the front cover of the Philips corporate brochure.


I'll post another entry before Christmas but if you don't get a chance to read it then Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.


Many thanks for reading the blog this year!.

County Hall London

I had a really interesting shoot for Architainment UK last week at County Hall in London. I've photographed and videoed the colour change LED lighting there before a couple of years ago for Philips Lighting but since then more of the facade of the building has been illuminated. Now the entire facade is lit and the LED projectors do a fantastic job of lighting the building in a dramatic fashion. The colour is set to a deep blue until Big Ben strikes (every fifteen minutes) whereby the building goes into a colour change frenzy for one minute then back to the blue. I took some detail shots and wider angle shots as well as a 7 shot panoramic which I shot from the other side of the Thames with my Canon 24-105mm lens zoomed to about 85mm. Architainment supplied and programmed the lighting control system and it works perfectly.
Here's a link to their website http://www.architainment.co.uk/

County Hall London

We traditionally go a bit quiet in December and we're now starting to wind down for Christmas. I've been in the office for most of this week (we had a shoot in the diary for Tuesday but we were rained off) so I'm feeling pretty relaxed and refreshed. It's been a very busy year and I'm ready for a break. Having said that we've still had a reasonably bust month and I've got three jobs pencilled in for next week so we'll be finishing the year on a high.

County Hall London

Last weekend we had a fantastic event in Milton Keynes called the Red Bull Home Run. The Red Bull F1 team are based here in Milton Keynes and as a celebration of their fantastic season in F1 Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel drove their F1 cars up and down Midsummer Boulevard in front of thousands of people. I took my little Olympus EPL1 along with a 17mm pancake lens attached and took some pictures of the cars racing up and down the Boulevard. It was a very overcast day and I didn't expect to get much of a result but I'm really pleased with the way this great little camera worked and the picture attached came out very well.

I could have taken my 5d and 70-200mm lens but I was jammed against a barrier and a small pocket camera was all there was room to manoeuvre so I'm pleased I took the EPL1 along. The more I use this cracking little camera the more I love it.

I've been running around like a nutter again over the past couple of weeks since the last blog post with jobs in London, Sheffield, Guildford , Cambridge, Gwent in Mid Wales, Swansea and Ashford in Kent.

Wharf Road Islington

I'd like to think if you put all the jobs on the map and joined the dots that it would spell a rude word but that's probably wishful thinking!!.
The London jobs were for Architainment (a division of Philips Lighting) and I've attached a picture of St Clements Church in Finsbury Park and a canal bridge in Islington with colour change lighting that responds to movement along the tow path in today's blog.

St Clement's Church

I photographed another church in Ashford for Havells Sylvania which has been lit with a combination of compact fluorescent track mounted fittings and LED based spotlights. The lighting looked great and the picture shown here is in fact three shots taken with my 24mm T/S lens stitched together to give a very wide angle view of the church interior. Photoshop has a very useful automatic action for joining pictures together and I like to use this technique with the Tilt Shift lens whenever I can as I prefer the perspective to that gained when using an ultra wide angle lens.
The job in Gwent was actually a combination of shooting video and stills over two days for Kinnarps. We've already visited site once before when the furniture was being delivered and installed by the Kinnarps fitters and this visit was to capture some footage of the building in use. We then headed over to Swansea on the third day to photograph a newly fitted out Virgin Atlantic call centre where the Kinnarps furniture really fitted in beautifully. I'll post the video in the blog once Pete has edited it.

St Mary's Church

I photographed a Tesco Extra store in Sheffield for Riegens Lighting who have supplied long runs of trunking with linear fluorescent lighting fixed to it and the Cambridge shoot was a combination of staff portraits and general shots of Cambridge for a new brochure for Hoare Lea. It was great to walk around Cambridge snapping away at the college buildings etc as the architecture there is beautiful.
I've been using my little Olympus EPL1 camera lots recently and now love it to bits. It's such a great camera to keep handy for grab shots and candid snaps on the go. My next project over the Christmas break is to shoot some medium format film with my Pentax 67 camera which I'm looking forward to. I'm thinking black and white shots in the snow and ice and if I can find a good model some nice location shots on slide film.

Ani with the Dirt Devil!

Great excitement gripped the office last week when our new hoover arrived - delivered swiftly to our door by Amazon!. Here's a picture of Ani in action with our little red Dirt Devil!.
He's so reliable I'm thinking of promoting him to the board - I'll have to ask Kinnarps for another office chair now too in case he needs to use the PC or answer the phone!.

Advent Calendar - Kinnarps

Advent Calendar - Kinnarps - Sorry guys this is the link I meant to post - win a trip to Stockholm with Kinnarps!.
Well worth a try and I can vouch for the fact that it's a genuine competition!.

Design Products - Kinnarps

Design Products - Kinnarps - Hi everyone - take a look at this link. Kinnarps are a great client of mine and they are such a friendly company to deal with. Great design and quality too with top green credentials!.