The importance of doing nothing!

by Matt Gore/iconphotomedia

Hi All, 

Yes bit of an Intriguing title.. 
For us it's a mantra, I mean it, it refers to our mindset when a few of us get together to goof about. 
We do test sessions where we may want to try a certain technique or look, but often is equally productive to just play about, have fun and achieve nothing!

One idea we often use is to take a lens, camera, light whatever and see how many looks/uses we can make from it. It tests your creativity and often results in some interesting discoveries. 
The important thing is to try not to be quick to judge and or be too results focused. Go with it, do some goofy stuff be child like, contradict yourself. 

Now I could show you all sorts of pictures from these sessions but in reality they don't cut it...but then that's the point!

Here's some shot a week ago that did work though and resulted in a technique I used to illustrate a story idea a magazine had...







and then used live on the client job. The Magazine article was entitled 'Outside looking In' referring to the recruitment policy of this particular company hiring highly skilled experienced staff from outside the sector.



A simple discovery using the Elinchrom Quardra ECO ringflash hand held. Great on some business jobs where the location offers little in the way of interesting backgrounds or details and time is often of the essence...isn't it always these days!?

The additional kicks you see to our faces in the studio pictures are created using a large silver brolly camera right (with CTO gel) and behind and a strip box camera left and behind. 
The images shot on the job were ringflash and softbox camera right, then comp'ed as a triplet in Photoshop. 

And here are one or two more from the shoot with the good people at The Richmond Housing Partnership in London.






All good fun and looking forward to seeing what the designers do with the layout

Job Contact Sheets

By Matt Gore - icon photographer


We have just updated our main site www.iconphotomedia.co.uk with a new folio section which shows off contact sheets from our recent commercial and editorial photography assignments.
We're hoping this gives clients a good understanding of what to expect when commissioning iconphotomedia.

(pictures from Vicky's recent shoot of TV chef James Martin - a PR gig of him launching an iphone app, we have included the photo info on this contact sheet for the blog, lit using a Canon 580ex speedlight and shoot through brolly, a second canon speedlight was used to backlight the steam in the cooking shots)

We have always worked for professional designers or sub editors and have tried to make sure every job that leaves our picture desk here in London has a variety of shapes - horizontals, verticals, squares and/or space to crop to those shapes, and in the case of certain clients plenty of dead space for copy.  Space for copy is an important consideration not only for cover work but also internal features. We have found that an image with copy space has much more of chance to get a large 'show' in a magazine or commercial publication than one without. Often designers will use an image across the gutter as a DPS if they can overlay some copy. It's also worth giving the designer options of light and dark copy space at the time of shooting by selecting alternative backgrounds, this allows both black and white text and is a much more elegant solution rather than heavy designer applied vignettes.

1)

Magazine cuttings where we have left copy space and a good designer has used to this to the magazines advantage, this can lead to much better 'shows' and useful portfolio material.

2)

Photography Matt Gore/iconphotomedia

1) Nikon D2x 18-35mm F2.8 lens, lit using the setting ambient sun, lifted the seated teacher with a Nikon SB-800 modified with a large chimera maxi box just enough to clean but not notice.

2) Nikon D2x with 18-35mm F2.8 Lens, I used window light in his hostel room, I had a lastolite reflector camera left angled back at him to fill the right side of his face.

Newspapers want a tighter more arresting portrait image, because of the quality of newspaper print it's a good idea to make well lit (poss slightly over lit) punchy images. Isolating the subject with the use of longer focal length or dropping the ambient and lighting using an off camera light source 

are good ideas, as is employing the use of a variety of kicker lights to add a 3 dimensional feel to the images. The most important consideration is 'what does my client want/not want' in the case of the Times here in London we have to make sure that our images for them don't have white backgrounds as they print without any key lines around picture boxes.

Peter Duncan TV Presenter - Photographed by Matt Gore for the Times Newspaper.

Here I used a 200mm F2.8 to isolate Peter, the tree is there to illustrate he has just become the UK's Chief Scout. This long lens technique appeals to newspapers worldwide. The photographers at International news agency Reuters use this and other long lens technique better than anyone else I know. When I used to shoot a lot of Newspaper work it was not uncommon to be asked for a 'reuters' look to a job.

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Photo: Matt Gore/iconphotomedia

Wakefield High Security Prison, shot at night for the Observer Newspaper, london

Feature on serial killer Doctor Harold Shipman

I always carry a tripod in the car and I used this to get a neat night shot of the rear of the prison, not without problems mind you, they have a land rover patrol that patrols through the night and they took close interest in me wandering around the wooded areas close to the perimeter fences. This picture works simply because of the colour, I really like the way the beauty of the image changes when you read the caption

Walt Marshall, D-Day 2nd World War Veteran, Photographed for the Observer Newspaper by Matt Gore, Grimsby North England.

In the middle image I have dropped the ambient and lit Walt with a speedlight in a Chimera maxi softbox camera left.  On a beach with big skys, miles of reflective sand and shiny glinting medals is a sure fire winner with any D-Day war vet picture!