This month’s blog is a roundup of our 2022 Location and Studio Photography projects - from our London studio to locations around the United Kingdom

Hasn’t 2022 flown?! Before yet another New Year rolls around, we thought that we should share what we’ve been up to this year.

It’s certainly been a busy and interesting twelve months for team Giles Christopher, with lots of exciting studio photography projects as well as location photoshoots.

Here are just a select few of the location and studio photoshoots we’ve worked on. If you have a similar project or a crazy new challenge, and you require professional photography or short-form videography, do get in touch with us!

Product photoshoots

2022 started with a flurry of interesting product photoshoots right here in our southwest London photography studio.

• We began the year photographing the heaviest of weight training belts (thank you to the team at Powerwave for helping to get my fitness routine off to a great start in January!).

• We also photographed an exciting range of drinkware for W10 and Costa, for our long-standing clients, the lovely JoGroup team. These shoots were both in our studio, and out in the fields surrounding the studio as a handy location.

• Also making a welcome return to our studio was Moose Drinks, with a fabulous new range of mixers.  They have been fans of our digital background screen from the word go.  For each set up, we can simply select a background colour for the screen to complement the drink.  We also went a little crazy and experimented with alpine scenes, which created a WOW.

• And of course, we had a number of bespoke products in to celebrate the Jubilee, including the lovely Ramsbury team and their Limited Edition Vodka. I don’t think the bunting was put away for months.

Each product photoshoot naturally had its own requirements and challenges. In some instances, we had to work to tight deadlines. Thankfully though, setting up and shooting in our custom-designed studio really does save time because we have all the equipment and props we need to hand.

Shooting in the studio also means that we can think, “how can we make this even better?” and incorporate additional props and equipment if needed, which we can’t do to such an extent when on location, with only the props we have with us.

Something new for 2022: Mixed Reality photography backdrops

2022 also saw us introduce using images on a screen behind the set, to create unique backgrounds, and a depth to our studio set ups.

We had been experimenting and talking about this for ages, and just needed someone brave enough to trust us with this new technique.  Fortunately, we had a feeling we knew who would go for it first.

With a new collection of cocktails created for International Women’s Day, the team at Drake & Morgan were our first converts to the background screen, and they’ve challenged what we can do with it over the last 12 months.

With the help and creative vision of Stylist, Andie Redman, we’ve created forests, fairgrounds and icy woodland scenes to complement their campaigns.   

Inspired by the creative brief, the photography backgrounds are usually created by Giles using AI software, making them bespoke for each campaign. This year Giles has really embraced this new technology, to great effect.

The foreground props are then carefully positioned, and lit, to make them blend in with the background depending on the look and style we want to create.

It gives us an unlimited selection of backgrounds - the possibilities are literally endless! We do sometimes get a bit carried away though and have to reign ourselves in!

When we aren’t getting lost in folklore themes, the images we use on the screen can also replicate more classic backgrounds, such as Christmas themes with twinkling fairy lights.

Location photography London

Baxendale Care Homes

We’ve been on various location photoshoots quite a bit this year, working on some great projects with our clients.

The most important thing we are always mindful of, when on location, is that we are usually in a place of work or at a beloved home for someone.  We are in other people’s environments, potentially taking over their daily routines, so we need to treat everything and everyone with the utmost respect while we work.

This was incredibly important during one of our favourite location shoots of 2022. We were invited to work with the agency team at The Creative Clinic on their photography shoots for Baxendale Care Homes. This was both a workplace and a home for the people we were with during the shoot.

This location photography shoot involved us working with a delightful mix of Baxendale staff, and senior professional photographic models. Obviously, this resulted in some fabulous, inspirational stories from our models living their best lives….. in their 80s and 90s.

And as for the Creative Clinic team, they are all quite incredible! They are meticulous at planning, providing us with fabulous commissions, interesting photo briefs, endless encouragement and well-scheduled shooting days.  There was nothing to not like about a location photoshoot with those guys!

Gridserve - Electric Forecourts

Another favourite location shoot of ours this year was for GRIDSERVE

They are creating incredible, solar powered, electric vehicle forecourts across the country, and are lovely people to work with.

A couple of years ago, we captured their new electric forecourt in Braintree; the first one of its type in the UK.  It was a huge honour to be asked to photograph it, and to continue to be asked back to work with them.

Earlier this year, GRIDSERVE opened their second forecourt in Norwich. Jon, from their marketing team, had the great idea of wanting to have light trails wrapping around the building. After a bit of experimenting with lights, wooden batons, secure fixings and bikes zooming around outside the studio(!), we confidently hit Norwich.

It was then a case of waiting for the light to fall slightly and encourage our willing volunteer – Jon (it was his idea after all!), to cycle at different speeds around the building with a wooden baton and light tubes strapped to his bike. Very high tech.

It was a team effort; a great challenge and great results were achieved. Everyone was very happy.  So happy, that we returned to Braintree again later in the year to capture the light trails around that building in the same way. We may have then got a bit over-excited with how the light trails looked around the electric pumps, vehicles and each other, but it was worth it.

Christmas shoots in summer!

So that brings us up to the wonderful summer months and, obviously, Christmas (in a heatwave)!

We traditionally shoot our client’s Christmas images early in the year so they have them for all the marketing material they need to have ready months in advance.

It always makes for an interesting shoot, setting up for a Christmas dinner while it’s so hot and sunny outside, but we wouldn’t have it any other way now.

This year was a real mix of Christmas food and drink shots in the Giles Christopher photography studio, and out on location.

Being able to provide both options here has been great for so many clients. Often it focuses the Chefs, as they aren’t side-tracked by the demands of their day job, parking isn’t a problem at all (we have lots), and we have a selection of props and surfaces close to hand in our studio store.

Our studio is also particularly useful if the client’s venue is still a building site, unsuitable for photography (it has been the case before!).

One of our highlights each year, is for PANZERS DELI.  They were back in the studio for more hamper shots.  As hampers aren’t just for Christmas, they are organised enough to come laden with delicious, beautifully curated products to cover all occasions throughout the year. 

We even set up and photographed hamper options for new parents, and moving into a new home.

And with the amazing Stylist Libby Silbermann as part of our team with PANZERS, everything looked beautiful.  It always makes us so proud to see the photographs on the PANZERS website - the team really do put a fabulous, thoughtful hamper, and gift boxes together.

Hotel Photography London: The COMO Residencies

Our other favourite location photoshoot in 2022 was capturing - in both stills and video - the impeccable service and stunning, understated luxury interiors of the beautiful apartments at The COMO Residencies by Hyde Park, London.

Also, later in the year, we photographed the refurbished rooms at The COMO Halkin Hotel in Belgravia.     

This commission covered everything we love; details, people and lifestyle, food and drink.

It was also a chance to work with the wonderful Stylist, Andie Redman again, alongside a recommended extended crew who felt like the perfect fit for this project.

This included a fabulous video team, headed up by Steve Turvey at Drop Bear Media and image retoucher, Sean Davies of Two Bear Studio.  (Weird ‘bear’ connection there, but they were brilliant bears and it was great to collaborate with them on both these commissions!)

Other things we’ve been up to in 2022

As well as being kept busy with location and studio photography, we were delighted, if a little freaked out, to have been asked to be guests on a number of photographic based podcasts and magazine articles.

We are both so used to being behind the scenes that these invitations pushed us out of our comfort zones. While we find them scary, we’re always flattered to be asked - and secretly enjoy them.

Giles was a guest on directorroster.com. Check out the episode ‘In Conversation with: Giles Christopher’ in which he talks about his move from being a film cameraman to running his own food photography business.

And he was also in conversation with Terry Hope of Professional Photographer Magazine about his AI photography, and his interest in it as a tool rather than seeing it as the death of photography - a bit controversial! This article is in January’s edition. He was also interviewed about AI for Business Insider.

Me? Well, I was fortunate enough to have been asked to guest on a recent Focus on Women podcast.  Terrifying but an interesting hour or two.

Another exciting year ahead!

All being well, 2023 will be as fabulous, challenging, interesting and rewarding as 2022 has been.

We have more AI background screen commissions booked in, some amazing people to work with and great projects being talked about already.

To find out more about our availability, and how we can work with you on your photography projects please feel free to contact me (Abi) to chat through your requirements.