Commercial photography on location has become an increasingly large part of my professional life over the last couple of years.
It is something I really enjoy doing. Each job is so different and there are so many interesting challenges.This project was for Trinity Insurance is a specialist firm providing insurance cover to our armed forces.
The brief was to produce a selection of images to use in their advertising, but without making our models identifiable. All of our models were serving soldiers and this just seemed prudent in the current climate.
It is always a challenge to produce photos that go against the normal rules of their genre. It also makes things more interesting. Together, we came up with some ideas that still had a human element to them. We had access to a barracks and its training facilities so there were plenty of location options.
I thought natural light augmented with reflectors or diffusers was the best option for creating the images. This is my favourite way to work in sunlight. You get what you see, nothing can fall over and there aren’t any issues with batteries and triggering. I can work quickly, and I don’t have to worry about recycling tmes. Used carefully, the results are very natural but still have a polish.
The nature of our location meant we went from bright sunlight to dim wooded areas and had to keep a consistent feel in the edit. We were lucky not to get any very green lighting from the wooded areas. Fortunately they weren’t so dark as to cause problems with noise either. Commercial photography on location can often produce unforseen problems, especially on a job like this where a site visit wasn’t possible. This is why often I only use about 25% of the equipment I bring to a shoot – better this than being caught out!
Toby
