We closed the studio for a few days to drive up to Manchester to set up shop at my business partner sisters house to photograph a set of their friends. The journey there was not a great start! We set off about noon-ish and didn't get there until 5.45pm....mission! A journey that usually takes a couple of hours, took most of the day.
The flat where we would be shooting was amazing though. The view during the daylight was immense, and any Manchester United fans out there would have admired it very much indeed.
Dave had sorted the hotel for us and I remember having a chat with him mum before we left.
"He's delighted he got such a bargain on the hotel room. Only about £20 each per night?"
Alarm bells. I paid more than that for hostel accommodation when I travelled the world!
Gutted!
We also found something in the sink straight out of a Stephen King novel. I won't go into details. I'm not normally this snobbish about accommodation. During my travels and three years at University I have slept in some bizarre and very uncomfortable places. However, this room was blatantly a cupboard disguised as a room and the clientele of the hotel consisted mainly of drunken Northerners. Realistically, we needed to get sleep if we were going to provide good quality imagery to the clients over the next few days.
Our HUGE thanks go out to Pete and Andrea (David's sister and her husband) for letting us kip at their flat. It was a big invasion on their home with both of us and all our gear, but very VERY much appreciated!
The family units photographed all ranged in ages and occupants, from very young babies to just a mother and her ten year old daughter. We are still waiting to hear back regarding how well financially the business will benefit from orders placed, but the feedback from the pictures designed was overwhelmingly positive. Plus, it was worth it just for this view after the sun had gone down.
We also had the pleasure of meeting Fred from the company BetFred. My business partner David had done some work for them while on work experience from University, and managed to arrange a meeting for us with the director of marketing. It looks like some work will be coming our way from them, which is a very exciting prospect indeed as they're one of the biggest gaming companies in the UK and sponsor some big races such as The Cheltenham Races. They also have some large sponsorship deals all across the sporting world, so we are very excited at this opportunity.
That was last week, and this week we have found ourselves catching up with bits around the studio and placing orders - back to real world! Today (Saturday) we set up our virtual studio at House Of Baby - one of our corporate relationships. It looks like we'll be selling some vouchers of their shelves and have one of their owners coming in tomorrow for a shoot with his two little girls and other half. I've been setting up virtual studios there as long as I can remember, since I set up the business on my own just over a year ago. Because of other commitments its been hard to get int here and exhibit as regularly as we used to. It was good to be in there today to see some old friendly faces and get back into older, familiar territory. We met quite a few expecting mums and dads, and look forward to hopefully welcoming them into two-d studios over the next few months as their families increase +1.
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