With Christmas just around the corner I have just teamed up for a commercial photography shoot with The May Fair Hotel. Commissioned to take commercial photographs of their interactive advent calendar. The May Fair Hotel will be giving the public a chance to win the day’s advent treat which showcases brands found in the local community.
Working with a team of creatives, I set about the commercial photographing assignment of photographing 25 individual presentation boxes. These all showcasing brands from the Mayfair community including Nicola Farhi, Temperley, La Perla, Miller Harris and House of Garrard etc. All the products provided by each brand had to look luxurious – so good lighting was essential.
The final commercial photography requirement was someone placing a bauble in the right place!
The image attached is the final shot I creatively led. With my editorial background I set up the image published in the Evening Standard. The set-up required 2 white backdrops for the width and several lighting heads in a controlled space. A team of us built up the pyramid shape. Then defining which presentation boxes worked together. We then placed the Christmas decorations around. The lighting was a combination of Elinchrom flash heads and tungsten. A number of boxes also required some illumination inside. For this I used a number of Manfrotto Maxima LED Lights. Once I had made the final lighting adjustments, all that was required was someone placing a bauble in the right place to give it the editorial feel.
Part of my commercial photography brief was also photographing the multi-layered window installation made by renowned designer Terry Jackson. No stranger to the world of Christmas window design his previous work being ranked in the world’s top ten displays amongst the likes of Claridge’s, Sak’s Fifth Avenue and Tiffany’s New York.
Instrumental piece of Commercial Photography kit!
The windows made for some tricky photography. With all the night time reflections onto the exterior window displays and continuous traffic passing on the street. Rather than stopping the traffic my assistants held a large black sheet behind me. This eliminated the ambient light of vehicles passing and other building lights. It’s not something I generally carry around but found it an instrumental piece of photographers kit for this type of commercial shoot!
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