When probably the world’s greatest finish and fit out company, Lucas from Kent in the UK, asked us to visit all their sites and take great head shots of their managers, we knew it was going to be a challenge!
Lucas have a great reputation combined with an awesome marketing and brand ethic that really sets them apart in the construction industry. Unusually MD Danny Lucas approached the design of the Apple brand http://robjanoff.com/aboutrob/ to create something for Lucas. The results are great, but the motivation to call in such a global branding expert speaks volumes about the Lucas philosophy
The 23 sites we were asked were mostly in central London, all high end and all quite hard to access so we knew there would be challenges. Lucas wanted 3 different types of shots taken of each of the 35 managers – working in their offices, working on the site and portraits in front of a background.
Space is always at a premium on these development so we knew the equipment had to be easily portable and quick to set up. In addition, we were to be shooting men (sorry- there were all men ) running multi million pound contracts on often billion pound developments so their time pressure is huge. We had to be really quick ads well.
Firstly, as a background we chose to use a ‘pop-up’ exhibition banner printed with the Lucas logo. These are spring loaded banners mounted in a portable aluminium tube that can be erected in a couple of minutes and as self-supporting. The device worked very well and was quick to set up in any small space we could find to put it. I would say this it’s a good job I am tall – it would have been a lot more difficult to do this if I had been 5foot 9inches as opposed to 6foot 3!
To light the formal shots we used a pair Canon 600RX-ET Speedlight’s and associated trigger to automatically set the exposure and fire the flash via a radio connections. The instant ‘plug and play’ nature meant we could rig and shoot immediately having previously set the lighting ratios on the trigger unit.
This system worked well in corridors, induction rooms and even restrooms as we squeezed ourselves into small spaces on site.
For the office and site shots there was not even time for stands so we used a hand held warm gelled Westcott Icelight for the main, and a very effective Makita LED for the kicker.
Before anyone says, I know the LEDs on the Makita will not be colour corrected and will have all sorts of major colour spectrum defects, but as a backlight pretending to be a window it was fine, one battery would last all week and it was easily adjustable. Also cheap and bombproof
Having such simple kit enabled me to concentrate on the people who Matt, my assistant and I, we talked and chatted to help take their mind of the shoot and as a result, we got some great images. Everything was shot in Raw on a canon 5d3 with Sigma 85mm 1.4, exposed at 1.4.
There is something special about these guys who pretty much without exception get up before 5am every day, travel into London and work 10 hour days often without a break. I am so impressed with that work ethic, and they are all without exception full of life and chirpy.
We visited 20 sites pretty much all of which consisted of 50+ brand new flats, pretty much all of which were well over a million quid each, sometimes 20 or 30 or 60 million all within a few miles of each other.
Overriding thing learnt from this job? I am so poor!! Seriously – where do the kind of people with that kind of money come from!!?? It makes you wonder…