We get asked to find locations for photo shoots on a regular basis, and it’s something which it’s worth spending a bit of time getting right. We have access to a range of locations to suit many different styles of shoot which are useful for photographing your new products in a suitable environment (ie: ultra kitchen, minimalist lounge etc) - but we’re also interested in collecting new locations too. If you have a property or location suitable for:

* Fashion photography - clothing, accessories
* Product photography - homeware, furniture, outdoor furniture

We require all types of homes and commercial properties ideally to be good examples of a ’style’ such as art deco, modern, contemporary, kitsch, of a period ie: 60s, 70s, 80s, historic, workspace, art galleries, warehouses.

Do drop us an email with your name, details, and 3 photos of your location with your anticipated rate and we’ll respond, as well as adding you to our list of locations.

There are also agencies specialising in locations for photo shoots, some of whom we will be adding here shortly.

Whether you’re using a semi professional or fully professional digital SLR, it’s going to get dirty inside and out. There are some useful specialist cleaning companies who can warranty their own work for up to 6 months - Fixation are based in London (0297 5823294), and also the slightly faster and more reasonably priced service from ACS (01953 889324). Both offer rapid turnaround sensor cleaning (£35 - £50) or a full service for upwards of £100.00. Recommended if you’ve got trouble with those ’stubborn stains’! Other DIY solutions include cleaning kits from Just Limited  which are excellent if you’ve a steady hand to clean the sensor within your camera. 
David Webb from ACS says “we normally have a look at the sensor itself under powerful magnification using a strong light, take an image at f11, then clean the sensor, then take several more images to make sure everythings cleaned up.” They have seen 3 or 4 damaged coatings on Canon 5D models as well the 350D, for which the replacement sensor can cost upwards of £700. David reckons it’s possible to clean a digital SLR to better-than-new condition - so there’s hope for those owners struggling with dirt and dust particles.

Aperture 2 is Apple’s own brand solution for both keen semi-pro and pro photographers who as yet haven’t wedded themselves to either of Aperture’s rivals - Adobe Lightroom or  the excellent Phase One RAW software. All of these retain their own benefits, but Aperture has just relaunched as version 2 with a substantially reduced UK price point of £129.00.If you are yet to commit, then Aperture 2 has a lot to offer. We are currently running the software on a MacBook Pro, and it certainly seems fast and a vastly improved over our previous favourite set-up, shooting with Canon’s own processing software combined with Adobe Bridge and Photoshop.We’ll add to this post shortly with a full rundown of the benefits as we seem them including the ability to shoot directly from your Mac using the Tether function - in the meantime,  check out the Apple website.

If you forget all your other New Years Resolutions, here’s one to stick to; “I promise to back up all my files - regularly.”

We know you’ve probably heard it time after time, but it’s great idea to make frequent back ups of your important files. We have heard countless sad stories of people who had become complacent about their drives and file back ups, only to find that one awful morning, (usually just before an important presentation) their main hard drive or external drive simply goes pop - often erasing their files in one swoop. We recall one phone call to a well known high street retailer PC World to request a price on their external hard drives, where the salesperson remarked ‘It’s not if your hard drive could go pop, it’s when’. The hard drive is the most common part of your PC to break down. And probably the most frustrating.

The only solution is to back up to two sources if you can. With our photography, we make a back up on DVD of every photo shoot which is then sent to the client. We retain a DVD copy too for archiving, and for future reference. We run several external drives here at the studio as well which make copies of each other, or mirror each other.

For Mac users, the new Leopard OS x operating system now ships with a superb backing up solution - PC users on the other hand will have to make their own manual back ups or alternatively use third party back up software. Other Mac backing up solutions include Carbon Copy Cloner and Super Duper! - both of which offer an answer to lost files. A word of warning though, make sure your good intentions are properly set up to keep backing up. It’s all too easy to implement one back up - and then forget about it. Try and set up your backing up software to automatically back up for you once a week if possible, so that even if you forget - your files will still be saved elsewhere should the unimaginable happen.

One final bit of advice -  never back up in a hurry. We guarantee you’ll regret it. One wrong click on your backup software can wipe your external hard drive and only add new files onto it, erasing everything else you may have on the drive - which could be a couple of years of images. It’s a nasty mistake, so we’d recommend you take some proper time to sit down and do it properly.

For Apple Mac-wielding photographers, the iPhone is an attractive proposition, but it’s worth doing your research to see if it suits your needs. Certainly, for anyone with a small business reliant on answering emails on the move, there can be few phones that combine the ease of use and downright sex appeal of Apple’s iPhone. We took the plunge and signed up for an iPhone Autumn 2007, and haven’t looked back. Compared to setting up the iPhone’s baby brother, the Nano, the startup experience with the iPhone has had us checking question and answer forums more than once in the first week, trying to figure out all the little things you need to know that just aren’t obvious in the beautiful but minimalist packaging and instructions that the iPhone ships with.

Questions like: ‘Can the iPhone cut and paste?’, ‘Can I use the iPhone before o2 connect me?’, ‘What’s my SIM number on my iPhone?’, ‘Does the iPhone have a junk mail filter?’, ‘Can iCal update itself via the web connection?’, ‘Can I sync my Mac laptop to the iPhone via bluetooth?’ and ‘How do I transfer an image from my laptop, and email it from the iPhone?’ are some of the pitfalls we’ve worked our way round - to discover a simple phone with superb web connectivity which for those of us comfortable with the Mac way of doing things, will thoroughly enjoy.

Any downsides so far? Well, the iCal issue would certainly be helpful, at present you have to physically connect the iPhone to your Mac to update the diary / calendar software. There is a rumour this will be fixed in next years updated firmware expected early 2008. Aside from this, we’re struggling to knock it - OK, the keyboard will not suit those with big hands, it’s a gadget you need to try before you buy, but on the plus side, the automatic spell corrector picks up nearly all our ‘mistypes’ and fixes them without worry.

It’s the way the iPhone handles your email on the move that we’ve really come to like - it’s childs play to sync accounts using your .Mac account, check, send and delete emails, as well as adding various POP accounts based on domain names you may own. Although you can achieve this with a Blackberry, we challenge you to try one back-to-back and see which you prefer using.

Oh, and get yourself the rubber case and iPhone screen protectors from your nearest Apple Store. You won’t regret it, as this svelte little gadget slips easily from your grasp - ours has hit the tarmac whilst jumping out of the car in it’s first week, and is wearing a new ‘battle-damaged’ look.

Helping your photographer means essentially that you will benefit from a smoother, more efficient day with them on the photo shoot. Photographers will thrive on having all the information they need at their fingertips, well ahead of time. It’s disconcerting to not receive a brief or description until the day of the shoot, and proper preparation can only be made if your photographer really understands what it is they’re going to photograph. Here’s some tips to help you, help yourself, and help your photographer, if you know what we mean!

• Write a detailed brief outlining exactly what you’d like to get from the photo shoot - ie: unusual angles of exterior of building, or 150 products on white background, or as many creative shots of models wearing new seasons clothing etc.
• If you’re meeting your photographer at an arranged location, make sure you’ve given them (in writing) the full address including postcode for where they need to be, and by when. (Presume they will hit some traffic, and ask them to turn up half an hour before you need them.)
• Whether you’ve booked a half or full day with your photographer, plan the day strategically. It will help you immensely if you know exactly what order you want things photographed, so if it helps you, write down a shot list, and describe what you want briefly by each time. If it’s a busy day where you and the photographer need to be in 7 or 8 different places, think carefully about timings, leaving yourself some leeway for travel, as it’s dreadful to be behind schedule all day.

What can you expect from your photographer? Well we’ll be talking today about the nitty gritty of a photo shoot; how quickly you can expect to recieve your images, what happens if you have to postpone or cancel a photo shoot, agreeing to terms and conditions, and what sort of service you should expect are all reasonable questions which often only appear when it’s too late to ask. Well, we can’t speak for every commercial photographer out there, but we can tell you how we aim to deliver in terms of customer satisfaction. Certainly photographers can expect a certain amount of clear communication from their client, and it’s vital to supply your photographer with a clear brief.What can you expect from us?Our commercial package remains the same for all our clients, and there’s no hidden extras waiting round the corner as with many commercial photographers. We feel it’s important to be flexible, so we ask our clients to agree to some basic standard terms and conditions before booking a commercial photography shoot, but we’re here to talk through any special requirements - and we always aim to make life easier for clients wherever possible. So, back to what to expect from us:

• You will receive a branded DVD delivered to you in our sturdy ‘Post Secure’ packaging
• The DVD contains both high and low resolution images, optimized for Print (300dpi) or Email / Web (72dpi)
• A useful PDF contact sheet will also be stored on your DVD
• Your images are stored on a secure website, accessed via your own personal log-in

An ongoing issue for many photographers is finding the right workflow solutions that make life easier in post-production rather than more complicated. Our clients feedback has been very positive in relation to how they receive their images after a photo shoot - and we’ve had some time to fine-tune this process. The trickiest part of this package has been creating a simple PDF contact sheet as part of an automated process, that INCLUDES filenames of the images. After much hunting around we finally chose (in conjunction with Apple Mac’s own Automator script software) a handy little freeware script (by Karsten Luth) which does what Adobe and Automator to date haven’t quite managed in one user friendly solution. Essentially it allows the user to process a set of photos into one PDF document, and includes the filenames within the PDF, and saves it to a destination selected by the user (see screenshot).

Immensely useful, we’d recommend as part of any photographers post production processes.

When asked to photograph products where a water droplet effect is required, we always reach for the glycerin. Rather than use pure water, which experience shows will bead off before you get a chance to depress the shutter, we recommend using a glycerin solution. We always take some time before a photo shoot to get the mixture right: not enough water, and the solution squits out in gloopy globs, too much water and the solution rolls off the surface to quickly. Apply using a fine pump spray about 10-15cm away from the surface, and use wide steady sweeps past the bottle a little at a time. Both the pump bottle and the glycerin are available from good chemists.

We often are asked how to go about choosing the right commercial photographer for your needs, and it can be a difficult and time-consuming task. To help you make a choice we’ve highlighted a few points to look out for when selecting a photographer.

Lets pretend for this exercise that you are either a commercial business requiring photography of an event or for a new marketing campaign, or perhaps you’re a design or advertising agency tasked with finding a good photographer who will suit your client.

Different ways to find a commercial photographer:

Personal recommendation
Always a great start, if you know someone who has used a photographer and rates them highly, head there first.

Try a Google/Yahoo/MSN search
Often a favourite for pushed-for-time designers and Art Directors, it can get you good local photographers quickly if you keep your wits about you. We often point people to a photographers website, and many fall at this first hurdle with poor sites that aren’t updated, or difficult to navigate. It’s up to you in terms of judging a photographer by his/her website.

Working with your photographer

Any photographer will benefit from a well thought out brief, either emailed or printed out, outlining briefly what you would like from the photo shoot ie: a range of images reflecting the external and internal features of the new building. It is a good idea on this brief to include the address and postcode for the photographer, as well as two contact telephone numbers.