To "InterNorga" inity and beyond....

Ok, Ok... bad title... apologies to Buzz, Woody, Jessie and all who have to sit through / watch Toy Story at least once everyday as I do at present, but you get the principal I'm sure...

I wish I could blame the girls love of all things Toy Story for my addiction to cartoons... they are certainly wearing a grove in this set of disks... but I was raised on Tom and Jerry... the "full fat", flat iron in the face, hammer on the toes version... not the "skimmed milk" version of now... but that's another blog post for another day!

Anyway back to the world of photography...!

It's always great to be asked to contribute to the ideas which form a client's Brief and even better to be acknowledged as having something to contribute! Not always the case at present, particularly with those have come to believe that photographers are only "data capture technicians" without any artistic skills or creativity of there own... that's right you in the back row, with the purple shirt and glasses who believe that composition, lighting, perspective and colour are all just "drop down" menu's in a photo application, I mean you!

We were recently sent a really great idea, just an outline on paper but full of possibilities, for one of our more creative clients... and asked for our input. Really should have remembered to think carefully before I replied... but what the heck...

They wanted to run a teaser campaign in the run up to the launch of a new product range, timed for the largest trade fair of their year... to highlight the artistic, creative nature of a new range of... plates !

Never mentioned a sports car, supermodel or pop band did I... so why are you surprised about the brief being crockery?

Anyway we knocked a few ideas back and forward, about art galleries, abstract art (yes really, Picasso if you want to know!) and exhibitions... oh and the product will be with you tomorrow and we need this shot by the end of the week! Never said this was going to be a month in the Maldives did I...

The result was a Brief that I was really interested to shoot, that I felt I'd helped contribute to positively, and an agency and client who were really pleased with the result.

How you support all those plates and bowls, not to mention tomatoes and asparagus without visible supports... or the need for complex montage or retouching... well that's what makes us more than just data capture technician doesn't it! Wish I had a "behind the scenes" shot of the rig but lets just say that my "photographers Meccano set" came in useful, as did a couple of roles of gaffer tape! And it's fun to chase tomatoes rolling across the studio floor... certainly more fun than standing in the one that got away!

The sequence of images ran across 4 separate Ad's prior to INTERNORGA, in Hamburg Germany, the European market... and were then picked up and used again by the South African side of the business, for an event they were displaying at later in the year. I bet none of those that saw the images knows ( or cares! ) where Darlington is, or that it's in the UK but that's just the power of what we do... work with great people to create great ideas and make clients happy!

So many thanks to Louise and Ruth, at Wildfire, for the Brief and putting up with my  rambling suggestions, scribbled drawings and our "wonderful test shots" which were laid out across the studio floor... and to John at CARLISLE for letting us all go with the idea... Thanks Guys!

Just call me Jonathon...

I must be honest, very rarely do commercial clients turn up at the studio “on spec”… indeed such a “well kept secret” are we that often clients require the services of our in-house “traffic controllers” just to find the car park!

So when sculptor Michael Kusz opened the door and walked in, carrying a large cardboard box, he was lucky not to get treated like the other parcel couriers… which we almost thought he was! That he’d driven down from his studio in The Dales on the off-chance that we’d be around… well he’s an artist!

I have to say that that the contents of the box were amazing… Michael creates dramatic, stylised but very animated sculptures of animals… real and imaginery… from metal… and somehow brings them to life. After that first visit we agreed that in the future we’d make arrangements to guarantee he didn’t waste a journey.

Which is what gets us to his later visit, another cardboard box… much larger this time…This was a beautiful sculpture, designed in The Dales, of what I called a sea monster. As we were just about to start another project this sculpture sat quietly in the studio for a few days, whilst I wondered how I’d light something which seemed to reflect the entire studio!

Needless to say I quickly christened it “Nessie”… you can take the boy out of Scotland, but not the ancestry out of the boy… which we thought was quite appropriate given the rising, curling swirls of it’s body… it appeared to be leaping out of the water…So when Michael returned to collect his beautiful work and review the images we’d created I had to mention the new name… but Michael had beaten us to it… apparently he’s called Johnothon... 3 "o's" for 3 humps!