Education Photography

On Thursday I was in Glasgow working for 2 Education Clients, firstly it was a local college for a half day shoot to fill some gaps in their requirements for the prospectus then I was onto one of the Universities for a quick shot of a Student who is featuring in a profile. She has done particularly well in getting a great job and the University understandably want to feature her.

The brief was pretty open, they wanted a shot of her that was different and unusual !! The office block she worked in was a modern normal building, nothing exciting about it. First problem, apart from the lack of exciting backgrounds, was fluorescent lighting as this makes skin look very green. I could not switch it off as she shared an office with other people. Mixing flash and fluorescent is a tricky one as the parts that are lit by flash look natural but the rest of the room looks green. One way round this is to cover the flash with a CTO gel to make the flash go green too then bring the whole shot back at the processing stage. Howe

ver, I didn’t have a cto gel with me.

We found a conference room that was in darkness, it was bland and uninteresting but I noticed some blinds inside the window panes between the room and the corridor, they were controlled by a little nob on the window frame and could be adjusted, I reckoned this might offer something different.

As always I did a few different head and shoulder shots round the office, at her PC etc just for safety in case the designer didn;t like my ideas, at least they would have a workable shot to use.

Then I placed my small flash on a voice operated light stand (otherwise known as my client) and got her to stand outside the room pointing the flash into the room at the subject who was by the window, after a little adjustment of the blinds and the flash power I got the shot I was looking for.

The second shot here is using the only real background I had, a white wall. I wanted to show a sense of importance by creating a large shadow on the wall. It’s fair to say I dont think it worked, she is too feminine for this type of shot. It worked brilliantly a while back for a photograph of a boxer but it’s not for women I think!