Commercial Photography Manchester

A new addition to this blog...Commercial Photography!

Everything to date has been following more of a fashion and edgy feel, so I want to make a show of some of my commercial and catalogue work.

Please let me know what you think, or if you have a new collection that needs photographing, give me a call... 

...and here's a few product shots too...

SLASH The Dress!

This is the final part of our summer-long Bridal Fashion and 'Trash The Dress' series.

Having shot the dress with our model, Abi, in Manchester in the morning, we then headed along to one of the old mill's on the outskirts of the city (sorry, the location has to remain secret!) to really finish this dress off!

Deb, our Make-Up Artist, had got hold of the dresses at the beginning of summer, and was by this point sick of having the two of them cluttering up her house...so out came the scissors and attack it she did...

I should also point out that the original styling and combination of garments to create this unique look was also envisaged by Deborah Lawson, along with some help from the our very stylish model, Abi.

Thanks to Matt (you know who you are) for his fabulous help in finding and navigating our location for the day.

If there are any magazines out there looking for a contemporary take on the new new 'Trash The Dress' phenomenon with a fashion slant, then you know where to come....

© Christopher Perkins 2008

Make-Up and Wardrobe: Deborah Lawson

Model: Abi Lutwyche

Assistant: Matt 'Darkscore'

Manchester Bride

If you've been following this blog you should be used to these Bridal updates by now.  This is the penultimate one in the series, in which we took our latest model to Manchester to look for some interesting street locations to use as a build up for final 'Trash The Dress' extravaganza.

The dress you saw previously in the Crewe Hall shots and Alderley Edge gymnastics images is back.  This time though, Deb has been hard at work creating a new look, adding the black floral patterning and cummerbund/belt along with a few other adjustments.  The piece that she has created is a dress that is uniquely beautiful and I'm sure many many brides would like to have themselves.

We managed to find some brilliant locations on the day and get some great colour into the pictures.  I couldn't believe it when we drove past Granada Studios, I had completely forgotten about the old frontage they have there, and hence I had to spin the car around a grab a few shots, despite the fact it is actually bucketing down with rain and Abi is actually hiding under that small canopy!

Photography © Christopher Perkins

Make-Up and Styling: Deborah Lawson

Model: Abi Lutwyche

Assistant and Location Scout: Matt 'Darkscore'

A new style for corporate headshots

Its time for a new style for corporate headshots!

Gone are the days of,

"Right then, sit at 45 degrees to the camera. Don't smile, you're a business man.  Head up. Look in the lens.  I only want your head and shoulders.  Here, lets put a nice mottled background behind you, that'll look lovely.  1 2 3..." Bang!  "Job's a good 'un...you can pay on your way out!"

Business isn't run like this these days and your images should reflect that fact.  You can be professional and business-like and still smile at the same time, in fact you're likely to appeal to potential customers more if you do.

These are some images from a recent shoot I did for Aquarius Equity in Manchester...

Castlefield Fashion Shoot

Here's a really interesting post for you, its got video and everything!!

A couple of weeks ago I did a collaboration shoot in Manchester, with the biggest team I have yet to work with.  The shoot was to be based upon an idea one of the models had come across, a little bit quirky, with the man constantly trying to impress the gorgeous young woman.

We shot it around the Castlefield area, which has stacks of character.  It is by the Manchester canal, and you will also see the very impressive Hilton hotel in the background.  This was perfect as we were trying to mix the old with the new, bringing in classic style with a punch!

This is a short video of the behind-the-scenes photographs, put together by our brilliant Make-Up Artist, Deborah Lawson:

Everybody was working for free and for their portfolio's, so here's a heads up of the team:

Photographer: Christopher Perkins

Models: CrZ and Martina Goodman-Withers

Make-Up: Deborah Lawson

Hair: Lee Nash

Wardrobe: Rachael Emma Sadler

So if you want to hire us, don't be shy!!

And here then are some more final images....

Click on them if you want to see them bigger and enter a gallery of close-ups.

Comments will be greatly appreciated.  Oh, and if you want to see the original inspiration to let us know how we did, have a look at the Celine website.

Dancing Inspiration

On the invitation of my friend, Sabine, I last night visited the 'Dance For Camera' event in Manchester, which is part of the 'moves08' festival.

Now I love dancing in the 'regular' sense, I'm even learning 3 different styles at the moment, but dance for art and performance art is something I've never managed to fully get my head around.  The world in which it revolves seemed to me to be quite elitist and less accessible than the genres in which I usually work.  A world where you had to know about and understand the whole history of where a performance has developed from.

However, this brief event has been somewhat of a revelation to me, and today I have found myself listening intently to the sounds I make as I wander round the house, opening and closing doors, tapping away on this keyboard, and its like the quiet but powerful rhythm that we all move to.

During the evening we were able to see snippets of some finished work by a couple of artists, Simon Ellis and Rachel Davies, and be part of a discussion about their work and how it was viewed.  This got me to thinking about my own work, particularly our early film, 'The Lonely Walk', and the way some people loved it but others were quickly bored, which I had always understood but found slightly frustrating.

What really interested me though, was the second half of the event, when things became much more heated and debate ensued.  Andy Wood was showing some rough cuts of a dance piece he had filmed a year previous and wanted to get feedback from the audience on how they viewed it.

These short sections of film brought strong debate on factors that had completely passed me by a first viewing...  How the characters interact with the camera and with each other, whether they even acknowledged it existence, the clothes that they wore, the style of the dance (which was compared to a style from the 70's that hadn't progressed), the views of the author and his methodology of working, and his ideological stance (or lack thereof).

This stuff surprised me and yet I could value all of the points that were being made.  It just goes to prove that in our creative fields there is always so much that can be read into an image or a piece, whether it was consciously injected by the author or not.

I would also like to present a beautiful piece of work by my friend, Sabine Klaus, and invite you to view more of her work at www.creationeditor.co.uk