I’ve just delivered a big project for ‘Links into Languages North West’. Links into Languages is a great organisation that helps promote language teaching and professional development for teachers across the whole country.
The brief was to ‘capture the North West’ and to try and get interesting shots that might provoke discussion. It also involved dragging a massive stuffed bear (Tiny – the mascot) around with me for several months…
According to the tourist board, the North West is comprised of Manchester, Liverpool, Chester and the Lake District, so these were the locations on my hitlist. I spent around 3 months on the project (not solidly obviously) and worked closely with the client to come up with ideas.
They wanted ‘not the usual’ and possibly ‘a bit quirky’, which in my bag is a good thing. However, this did mean that all the obvious pics and locations were out (no barges allowed!), and my initial suggestions of dour looking men with pigeons was met with blank disappointed faces.
Some of the locations were quite specific to the Links into Languages organisation too – the brief for the Lake District only involved the Cockermouth Eco Centre and a place called Higham Hall ( a tad weird), so the usual imagery that springs to mind when you think of the Lakes was also out in this case.
Tiny the bear, was a mixed blessing for the project. It’s sometimes good to have a feature in a picture that could otherwise be a bit dull, so sometimes I’d stick the bear in a shot and light him up, either with a combination of speedlights or my new Elinchrom Quadras.
Higham Hall
A good example of this is the photo to the left. I tried to capture the oddness of the place with various lighting techniques eg the interior is lit by an Elinchrom Quadra on full whack firing out, and Tiny and the left interior of the porch is backlit with a Nikon SB800.
Below are a few examples of some of the other locations for the project…
Manchester
Liverpool
Cockermouth eco centre, Northern Lake District
Chester (featuring Tiny)
This is only a very small selection of images from the project. To see the full set in all their glory, head over to the ‘PORTFOLIOS’ section of my website at: www.dandphotography.co.uk
