Category Archives: 201 Professional experience
P1 Supercar Sunday.
P1 Supercar Sunday was one of the biggest events of the calendar and one event I wasn’t going to miss, the events was a 2 hour drive down south and a very early morning to get there before the cars arrived to get some shots of them arriving. I must say I was disappointed the weather was beautiful the cars were sparkling i had the right lens the 24-105.
There was one difficulty on the day as the clouds kept covering the sun which messed up the settings on the camera so i was in a constant battle with shutter speeds and ISO’s I feel i got some really good shots and showed how much of a great day it was trough my pictures. I have been approached by P1 International to ask if they could use my Pictures for their website and marketing, and an automotive news website called CarBuzz who have a massive audience has approached me to feature my photos in their article for the event.
Here is the link http://www.carbuzz.com/news/2013/5/13/P1-Supercar-Sunday-2013-7714311/
The article has been read by over 14.000 people which is amazing!
This is all great news and more publicity for my photos and business.
Professional Experience Reflection
This module ha helped me launch my career into the Media industry, I have became a Media professional in a dream job for myself through a lot of hard work and not giving up. I have really enjoyed this module and it has pushed me to try my most to get what I want after I’ve spent a lot of money on travelling advertising and various other things it all feels worth it at the end of the module. But my professional experience will never be over as i’ll always be learning through my career.
I have done a lot of hard work through freelance, pre-production, a lot of photo shoots, videos, graphic design and many hours spent editing. I would say all the work and effort I have put into this module easily surpasses the 20 days we were all aiming for. For the past two months I Have been working as a community manager for Listers Group who are the largest privately-owned automotive group in England, family run and family owned, with a focus on providing the best customer experience in every aspect of our business, fostering a fertile environment to encourage and promote a great workplace, and representing the best and most prestigious automotive marques in the world.
This module has really launched me into a career where I control a massive companies social networks, travel around the world to some of the best events and photograph and video some of the best cars on the road today. I got this through a lot of hard work and dedication and feel truly blessed that someone seen that in me and offer the chance.
I have a lot more lined up in the future, this module has taught me so much about how to be a professional in the media business and some great skills on set with the camera in my hand.
Separate Car shoots.
Over the past year or so i’ve been arranging separate shoots with some car owners, they have been through various arrangements. Some shoots I have had to set up or ask for, others I have been approached and asked to take pictures of owners cars. This has helped greatly and let me add more work to my portfolio for clients to look at.
Rabs GTR.
One of my friends Rab recently bought a brand new Nissan GTR and wanted some pictures taking of his new beauty, The car was very expensive and is highly desirable to a car enthusiasts. He invited me over to his house to take pictures of the car around his area as he didn’t want to take it far, the car was a gorgeous shiny metallic blue and was very photogenic.
I used my kit lens for this shoot as it was pretty last minute and headed straight over as I felt the kit lens could cover the shoot well enough, i feel the pictures turned out great and they seemed extremely happy with how the pictures turned out. Heres a link to the pictures.
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.503980096333486.1073741831.396271850437645&type=3
Playing around with long exposure.
Another project i have been working on is my long exposure shot’s, i love the look of long exposure shots at night with the use of light painting or steel wool, they add a great effect and really make the shots look truly special and professional. We had to find a location which was completely dark yet safe enough to do what we needed, we head to the barracks car park roof to get some shots and thought it was a great location so we played around with some light painting with some small LED Torches, the pictures turned out ok but not great. We were using a really low shutter speed leaving it open for around 4-5 seconds sometimes even up to 10 seconds to get the effect we were looking for.
We then went back out to attempt some steel wool pictures, this was something we had wanted to attempt for a while. We did our research first and found out how it was done, after finding a safe and secure location we started playing around. We had a whisk on a chain with steel wool stuffed into the whisk, open the camera shutter once its lit and get spinning the whisk on the chain. This creates the spark effect as the camera picks up all the fibres of the steel wool being thrown into the air. The pictures look great and create a truly epic effect!
After that I went out to attempt light painting again this time with a bigger LED Torch, as we all know bigger is better. I had some locations in mind that i thought would look really nice and grungy, so headed out and had a go. I got a lot of cool shots and they turned out just how I wanted!
Jaguar F-Type Drive Away
As Part of my job for Listers as Community Manager I attend a lot of events and cover them via our social networks to share the experience with our customers and audience, One event i attended was one of the best day in my life the Jaguar F-Type Drive away from the Ricoh Arena.
The event was in honour of the first drive away many years ago for the original E-Type, Jaguar thought it would be a nice touch to emulate the day with the launch of the new F-Type, the cars were there being collected by dealerships as there demonstrator models. The day would begin with a brief chill out and drinks in the Jaguar Suite in the Ricoh Arena then we went into a presentation of the new Short Film by Ridley Scott associates and staring Damien Lewis. We were then given a brief introduction to the F-Type. After that we had a full roast dinner with pudding and refreshments before being lead out to our cars. I was there to cover the whole day with my camera and get the atmosphere of the day.
The cars were then driven from the Ricoh arena to the Coventry ring road in a convoy of 60 cars lead out by the last production Jaguar E-Type, It was an amazing sight and shooting the convoy from the window was just crazy, some of the shot’s turner out out great!
Here’s a link to the pictures:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.342808642508761.1073741829.287395038050122&type=3
More shows and events!
Ultimate Dubs
Show season is pretty much here, i’ve been to a lot over the past phew months and got a lot of great shots, met some good friends and has some great feedback from owners and other peers in my industry. As far away as Italy, that much they wanted permission to use my pictures in their magazine!
Show season started with a show called Ultimate Dubs at Telford international exihbition centre, I have travelled over the country for some shows which has been a good experience lots of early mornings and queuing. Ultimate Dubs is a show for VAG Cars which means there all German, and DUB is a modding type where cars are slammed to the ground with big wheels and cartoon styling. I’m a big fan of these types of cars owning one myself, I used the two camera technique again each with different lens’s to get a variety shots without the hassle of swapping lens’s.
The show was massive covering 3 halls and outdoor show and shine stands to cover as well. I feel I done a great job the photos reached over 9,000 viewers on my Facebook page which is massive for me to get my pictures noticed and my name out there! They were even good enough to feature in an italian tuning magazine called UN1QUE which is a great accomplishment for any photographer to have there work printed in a glossy magazine!
Heres the link to the pictures:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.494686310596198.1073741825.396271850437645&type=3
The Fast Show
The second show I Attended was The Fast Show, this show was completely different and was at Santa Pod Raceway. It featured a wide range of different cars and the conditions were horrendous pouring with rain, mud swamped fields and people leaving as we arrived!
I did the best i could with conditions and decided to edit the pictures to make them look extremely stormy and dark, the pictures look really aggressive and moody which was a different editing style to my usual bright vibrant colours!
The set of pictures are below:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.497850673613095.1073741829.396271850437645&type=3
Early Edition
Another show i’ve been to was Early Edition, this was another VAG DUB show which was massive in social reach amongst the community and attracted a wide range of different cars. The weather was great and we arrived in the afternoon to avoid the queues early in the morning. I only went with the one camera as equipment was all booked out from university unfortunately, shows me I have to book further in advance in future.
The pictures looked pretty epic once they had finished editing and the set was very popular online with people tagging owners of cars from around the globe.
Pictures are below:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.509675925763903.1073741834.396271850437645&type=3
Stratford Motor Festival
Another show i recently attended was the Stratford motor festival which celebrated the west midlands tremendous motoring heritage with a wide range of cars, I attended for Listers as we had a stand at the show, and for my self to get pictures for my page and portfolio. It was a lovely day and the pictures got a tremendous reception on both my page and throughout Listers Pages.
I went with a 85mm 1.8 lens and just used the standard kit lens on the 60D, the pictures turned out really well and shows the atmosphere of the show on a bank holiday weekend packed with activities for the whole family.
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.518313161566846.1073741837.396271850437645&type=3
Ford Focus RSOC
Another lane I went down to gain more Automotive photography experience was hitting up owners clubs on their forums. I was offering photo shoots for owners or whole clubs. None seemed interested and didn’t appreciate companies trying to promote themselves on forums, so I had to apologise a couple of times. I started to swerve away from forums and concentrated on shows and my normal stuff, I had a shoot planned for two Ford Focus RS’s. I then happened to see an owner getting into a Focus RS in Sainsburys car park. Me being myself approached him and asked him if he’d be interested in getting involved in the shoot and handed him a business card. How awesome would 3 Focus RS’s be?
That evening i received an email from the fellow in the car park, who to my amazement was an admin of the Focus RS owners club forum and said he could turn it into a meet for users to get pictures of their cars. I was gobsmacked and couldn’t believe my luck! After a phew weeks getting an idea of numbers and a location sorted. We settled on Burton Dasset country park, with 15-20 cars scheduled to be arriving i had to bring in some extra help so invited to friends along to help with pictures and get them some professional experience as well.
I used the wide angle lens 17-40mm and shot some HDR Shots, this was done by taking the same shot at three different exposures.
The shoot went great and just goes to show if you don’t ask you don’t receive I am a regular attendee at there meets now doing photography and i’m going with them to Ford Fair in August as well. Heres two events i’ve been to with them below.
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.478900048841491.109697.396271850437645&type=3
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.500992156632280.1073741830.396271850437645&type=3
Driving instructors car.
This was my first ever paid photoshoot, after doing various pictures of my own car and others. My old driving instructor got in touch and told me he loves my work and really wants some pictures taking of his new learners car, and he would be willing to pay. I asked around for prices and what I should be charging a lot of people worked on the basis of £50 a day so I went with that.
Before the shoot, I planned the location of Warwick as this is where he is based and takes his learners for lessons. Warwick has a lot heritage and some lovely cobbled streets for some great shots. I had all my kit prepared and a nice 24-105 lens of a 5D all ready to go, I reformatted my memory card on the camera to get as much room as possible.
So i met up with my old driving instructor and did the shoot of his car in various locations in the city centre of Warwick and got some cracking shots. Came back to edit them and ohhh…..
When i got back to start editing the pictures on my Mac some where there, but a lot of the files were corrupt and couldn’t open. It seems as though part of the memory card formatted and some didn’t, therefor the photos started again in numerical order but when it got to the same ones from previous shoots the camera didn’t know what to do.
After i realised I had to ring my client apologise profoundly and offer another free shoot, I couldn’t believe this had happen and i felt really bad. He was really nice about it but its a lesson learnt to format and have memory cards ready to go before hand.
Final pictures are below.
Track day photography.
One other element I wanted to add to my work portfolio was some live motor sport photography, to do this i looked around at some of my local raceways and emailed around to see how I could get involved. A couple got back to me saying that they have open track days for teams to practice for the up and coming races.
This was great so I headed to the track armed with my 70-200 zoom lens along with a wide angle for the inside garage shots, the day was a lot of fun was the first time i got a Media bib which made me feel quite professional. I had to sign in and show some insurance documentation. Some of the shots turned out great and I’m really happy I had this experience.
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.477409935657169.109527.396271850437645&type=3
Website and Business cards
As I started doing more work I realised I was becoming more professional and attracting attention, I needed a website. At college I studied Web Design for a year, I decided to design my own website and put my self out there on the web to be found and link to from other places. My website has an about me and my work, a working gallery of my videos and photos and all my contact information. My website gives me more of a professional look and makes me desirable to a client.
After the website I decided to add more to inventory to impress clients or future clients by investing in business cards, I was getting asked for my number or business card and was getting fed up of saying sorry I haven’t got one as that just stinks of amateur.
Matt-Media 