Rich Tea Deer !

A few years ago I was commissioned to create a campaign image for a private school by Ice House Design in Bath.
The brief required that I did some animal photography and a Photo Composite a stag onto the sports field of the school.

Published-stag

I have to admit I often love the challenge of sourcing the elements needed for composite work but have to admit I thought finding a stag would be a tall order.
In fact, after a short time searching I found South West Deer Rescue Centre located within 20 minutes of the studio.

The centre was a charity run by a lovely chap called Mike and after a brief chat on the phone and a visit for a recee he introduced me to Rubus who was to be my model.
The shoot day went like clockwork and week later I had completed the retouching and delivered the job.

A week or so later I returned to the sanctuary as I wanted to photograph Mike feeding the deer their favourite snack Rich Tea biscuits!

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“Whoever You Want To Be” Stonar School

A lovely campaign called “Whoever You Want To Be” for private school Stonar that I photographed and composited together a while ago.

Commercial Photography Shoot, Seeing Double For Stonar

A few weeks ago I received a call from Ice House Design In Bath which is always exciting as I’ve had some lovely briefs from them in the past.
It turned out this call was to chat about another interesting brief titled ” Whoever You Want To Be” for a private school in Bath called Stonar.

The concept was to show the wide variety of activities and opportunities the school offed by showing the same students repeated in the image but in other outfits.
After a brief chat about what I thought might be the best solution to getting the job shot and retouched Jack from Ice House explained about the rather tight deadlines that needed to be met.
The completion dates required happened to be bang in the middle of one of the busiest periods I’ve known as well a family holiday but a doable schedule was drawn up and the job was booked in.

The shoot itself was shot on location at a beautiful 18th-century Georgian mansion called Hartham Park close to Bath.
Upon arrival on the shoot day, It seemed every corner of Haytham’s interior offered me another photographic opportunity and the phrase “Kid Candy Shop” comes to mind.

Finally though myself and Les, the creative director narrowed it down two rooms that fitted the brief perfectly and the job was completed within our allotted time.

A few days (and early hours) in the post was needed to meet a couple of the deadlines but the whole job went together without any drama and more importantly, the client & agency were very pleased with the results.

Design Agency Ice House Design

Photography Simon Plant

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Advertising Photography Capturing Chefs In Copenhagen

Advertising Photography Capturing Chefs In Copenhagen

This image is from an advertising shoot last year for Knorr which took me to Copenhagen for a whirlwind shoot.
This was not my first trip into Europe for Knorr having previously shot in Rotterdam a couple of times. I was once again briefed by Bristol agency Flourish to what was required for the product which was for Unilever‘s Knorr Artisan range.

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Professional Business Photographer. Boosting The Ayr Miles..

Professional Business Photographer. Boosting The Ayr Miles..

Being a commercial photographer in the uk is a funny business as you never know what the next phone call will bring and the last couple of weeks have been no exception.
It started with a call from an old friend who operates  KCP Ltd from Ayrshire in Scotland.
KCP specialise in transferring all types of waste with their huge fleet of lorries both from within Scotland and across the UK.
They needed to not only capture the vehicles within the beautiful Scottish landscape (something which I have a lot of experience of shooting in the past) but also corporate portraits and other images to showcase what they do.

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The shoot took place over a long weekend with some changeable weather that actually worked very well with our schedule as did the locations that were chosen.

Short flight home on a Sunday evening allowed me just enough time on Monday to secure the images and repack before driving up to Heathrow for a flight to Copenhagen for Bristol Agency Flourish
I’ve worked with Flourish a few times capturing campaign images in Holland of various Chef’s for their client Knorr and this one was not different except Denmark was the location for this particular shoot.
After a change to the original location for a better one and a shorter shooting time, everything came together according to the client’s wishes.
I can’t publish any images at this point as the campaign is not yet live but as soon as I can get some samples rest assured I will.

This week I packed again for a trip to see some buyers in London followed by a meeting and a small shoot in central London for a corporate photoshoot  with client Mimecast. This is followed today by packing yet again but this time for a weeks holiday and boy I feel I need one !

Have a great Bank holiday everyone….

Mimecast Advertising Campaign

Back in the summer, I had the opportunity to work once again with creative director and good friend Stuart Lowe in Central London.

I had the good fortune of working on a contract for Trader Media Group and Stuart for several years shooting exotic cars on location all over the UK.

Stuart who is now Creative Director at Mimecast a software service company specializing in email archiving amongst other things contacted me to shoot a campaign they were looking to run to help promote their Cloud storage services.

The images were all captured in a few hours at Mimecast’s offices in central London and retouched by us.

 

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Beautiful Bray Leino

Today I had a very enjoyable Wednesday morning at a meeting in the slightly grey but beautiful Devon countryside with the rather nice creatives at Bray Leino.

I’ve visited several times over the last 20 years or so and I never fail to be impressed by their stunning offices and it’s rural location.

 

A Few iPhone Snaps

South Wales To Central London

One of the great things about doing advertising work is you never know what’s going to come in with the next phone call or email.
Last Friday this week looked like being a fairly quiet and relaxed one but it proved far from it.
On Tuesday we found ourselves heading across the bridge to Cardiff for a couple of meetings regarding a potentially very large commission we had put a proposal in for the just the previous week.
Thursday we found ourselves on the road again this time heading for Central London at fairly short notice for a nice little shoot.
Now I love shooting in London but driving through the centre is not for the faint hearted especially when your idea of heavy traffic normally consists of 2 0r 3 horses or a tractor and trailer blocking the narrow country lanes.!
Glad to say I transformed into city driving survival mode and breezed (kind of) in and out without any problems.
As I said love working in London but it’s kind of nice to get home away from the crazy roads !
Have a great Whitsun everyone..

 

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Capturing Deer On Location

After a very enjoyable week in Portugal it was straight back into it this past week with two assignments planned.
I can’t reveal too many fine details at this point but one of the jobs is a follow up to a very successful adverting campaign we shot & retouched last year.
This shoot involves capturing some rather cute (some of them at least) Deer on location and we happened to find the perfect place just a 20 minute drive from our studio base at The Monks Yard.
Despite being rather unpredictable beasts the shoot went extremely well and I completed all the images needed with any drama.A few days later I had completed the capturing of all the elements needed and we are now currently working in post to assemble the two ads for the agency.Here are a few snaps of the location and some very brief video footage.
I’m hoping to reveal the final images here within the next few weeks and can’t wait…



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XXL Books “The Monster Photo Directory”

I suppose it does not matter what you do if you are self employed for a living we all get approached to advertise in something or other.
If you are a commercial Photographer it seems to be calls or emails about placing adverts on photographic web portals or in some promotional book that is being distributed to every creative and his dog.
Don’t get me wrong I’ve done my fair share of promoting in a few of these publications over the years and some are well respected and are actually used by the Designers and Ad Agency creatives who receive them.
I’m pretty picky about where I spend my advertising budget and generally stick to direct marketing these days and give little time to looking at paid space in books. However a few weeks ago I received a call from a very nice Dutch fellow called Eric Kievit who chatted to me about a monster sized 50x70cm photography book his company XXL Books produced.
I have several Dutch friends whom I have met while visiting Turkey where we have a holiday home and so  had an enjoyable chat about many things Dutch including Football and how some of my favorite photographers all seem to be either Dutch or German.
Despite my doubts over advertising in this impressive sounding publication this year Eric kindly said he’d send me a copy (all 10kg of it !) in the post of their Dutch Photography edition so that I could experience & enjoy the stunning photography.
True to his word the book turned up a few days ago and it really is an impressive publication not only in size and weight but also in the quality of the reproductions.
I look forward to seeing the U.K version and maybe submitting my own work at some point in the future.

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