Sussex wedding photographer's blog » corporate photography

Bank of New York Mellon ‘Impact’ evening

DaveP — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 11:44:11 +0000

A short break from wedding photography here with some shots of the entertainers at a recent Bank of New York Mellon event. This was for the launch of ‘Impact’ a multicultural group within the bank that focuses on staff from Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds.
The evening started with a Chinese lion dance. The only lions I’ve ever seen have been in a zoo and were lying around yawning, this one was a bit more lively and did a lot of jumping around the stage and shaking it’s head at the audience. This was followed by a very elegant solo Chinese dancer and a martial arts demonstration.
The main event was a series of speakers, talking about their personal experiences, and Impact’s mission to act as a resource for the company and employees, with a specific emphasis on the recruitment, retention, professional development and advancement of multicultural employees.
The event finished with a fantastic display of Bhangra dancing. These guys had unlimited energy and seemed to spend half their time in mid air. That drum was very, very loud! One of the dancers was also an employee at BNY Mellon, so his co-workers had the opportunity to see him out of his business suit and in action.

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New prospectus photographs for City College, Brighton.

DaveP — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 20:15:46 +0000

I’ve worked on various commissions for City College in Brighton over the last three years, providing photography for poster campaigns and various promotional materials. Last week I spent two days taking photos for the new 2009-10 prospectus.

In previous years I’ve spent quite a bit of my time at the college taking photos of students as they worked. The brief for the prospectus this year was to try for a less literal representation of each subject area. Instead of photographing classes as they happened we set up shots, mainly of individual students, and spent some time on the composition. The idea was to get images that could be used in a magazine style layout, some with enough room for text to be included.

We had allowed about an hour for each subject and tried to get a selection of shots in each area, using different backgrounds and models. We also had to find willing, suitable models from amongst the college students in that time, so the schedule was fairly hectic.

The college is lit with fluorescent lights, which give a horrible greeny yellow look to photographs, so I had to use flash for most of the interior shots. I used a very minimal lighting setup because of the lack of time, just a Speedlight on a stand bounced into an umbrella and triggered with a radio slave. This meant I could get the light source off the camera, move it around the subject, and get a variety of effects. Light from a flash mounted directly on the camera gives harsh shadows, a flat look, red eyes and generally looks quite nasty.

If I’d done this on my own I think I would have been lying in a sweaty heap by the end of it, luckily I was helped by two graphic designers from the college, Steve and Sarah. They came round with me and found locations, students and came up with some good ideas for shots. At the end of the job I had a wide selection of images that I think will fill the prospectus quite nicely.

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Corporate photography for Bank of New York Mellon

DaveP — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 16:24:34 +0000

I was booked for a corporate photography shoot for The Bank of New York Mellon yesterday. The brief was for a few portraits and some group shots of staff for a Powerpoint presentation as part of International Women’s Day. As usual with this kind of job it all had to be done quite quickly. Most of the people involved were in senior management and only had a few minutes to spare for photographs. I turned up early to meet my contact, Diane, and went round the building to look at potential places to set up. Diane had booked several nice spots with plenty of space and some natural light. A good location can really lift a corporate image, so if you can avoid small windowless rooms with very large boardroom tables it helps!
By the time our people had arrived we were ready to go and managed to get everything we needed in two short sessions, allowing the staff to get back to their proper jobs.
I used a small portable lighting kit, which can be set up and dismantled in about five minutes. The combination of flash and natural light was enough to give some depth to the photos.

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