90 Years and Counting

I wanted to talk a little about another shoot we’ve got going on in the studio this week. Right across the street from the studio is Warr’s Harley Davidson. They’re celebrating 90+ years of business and today there’s all sorts of merchandise being photographed. There’s an array of tshirts, long sleeved tees, vests, hoodies, jackets, hats, bags, and all sorts of miscellaneous items sporting their well-known logo. Everything looks really cool. It’s fun to have businesses from around this area coming in to shoot here.

Congrats to Warr’s Harley Davidson on 90 years of service.

Cheers!

Kristina

So one ongoing project in particular we’ve been working on is shooting photographs of handmade chandeliers for a company that works in the same building as us! They design and make the chandeliers themselves and they sell upwards of £10,000! The first day we started we had a few complications. First the chandeliers were rather large so it’s pretty hard to move them too far. The biggest problem though was the fact that their workshop is on the ground floor, our studio is on the 2nd, and the lift is out of order! So instead of bringing the chandeliers to us we went to the chandeliers. It took us about an hour and a half but we brought all our equipment from the studio downstairs and built a makeshift studio in one of the service halls! It was pretty cool to learn how to set up a studio outside of a studio. Then started the process of getting the chandeliers in. It took 3 guys to hang each chandelier one at a time and bring them in. Each one was gorgeous and completely unique. 

Here’s before the shoot:

 

And here’s after!

We’ve done two shoots with them so far and it’s been really beneficial to learn how to problem solve with products that are complicated to shoot. I’ll go into that more as I go because I’m actually about to start research in order to write my own article on studio lighting for photographing chandeliers.

Cheers!

Kristina 

American in London

Hello!

My name is Kristina Verrington and I’m the new intern at The Light Studios! I’ve flown all the way over from the United States to be here in London for about 5 weeks. I’m from Suwanee, Georgia which is a suburban town north of Atlanta. I’m a 3rd year student at the University of Georgia (GO DAWGS!) and I’m studying photography there. I’ve been here almost two weeks now and I’ve already experienced a lot of firsts: First time leaving the USA, first time flying on a plane by myself, and first time working in a professional studio space!

I first got interested in photography when I was a freshman in high school. I picked up a camera and fell in love. Since then I started shooting weddings at 16-years-old, portraits, landscapes, etc. However, I’d mostly like to talk about what I’ve done here in London so far! In just two weeks I’ve learned a lot about setting up the studio and lighting. I’ve gotten to wander around Fulham and do some location photography. I’ve also gotten to help out one of our photographers, Paul, with a few different product shoots. Shoots have included so many products, from a vintage Chanel pant suit to shawls to handmade chandeliers!

Everyone here is incredibly talented and I’ve learned so much already. I can’t wait to see what else I get to experience here!

Cheers!

Kristina

New Times Coming

I would like to introduce myself, William here, well in fact my real name is Guillermo Perez-Moya Fdez-Coronado, but that is so difficult for people here to say. I am a photography n video student and for finish my degree I came to London for practice in a company doing internship.

I just came here to The Light Studios with anything and I get any help I need. I get accommodation  with a guy working here too, Dave, really nice, and really near from the studio!. So Francesca, my manager, its wonderful and treats me awesome. Well, in fact, all people here are really kind.

First weekend I was going to meet a delightly lovely french girl and her friend, so i told my spanish friend whose name its the same as mine to come with me. At last, we got into the spot and I realised that her boyfriend was in fact her friend and I say OMG ok in fact I have thougth that this was going to happend! Ok, then I lost my phone, my oyster card recently topped up and get real cold, now in flu. I am really glad!!

Apart from free time, working its been really well, shooting products with Paul and joining music videos! BMX thing its coming and London MArathon lot of things!!

So long!

there is no business like show/music business

Video shoot after video shoot is going by and time is flying fast. People are being ushered around, make-up is being fixed, the filming days are getting longer and longer. You think that I’m getting tired of this? No way! That’s the most amazing part of the business if you ask me! Lots of people involved in a project, seeing it all come together and creating some amazing work of art, that’s what it’s all about in my opinion. You can literally see how passionate people are about their work.

During the last couple of weeks we had some really amazing video shoots. The first one I would like to tell you about was the video shoot for the band “Pony & Trap” performing their song “Time To Engage”. After the shoot our videographer did an amazing job with editing all of it and creating a really cool music video for them. It’s fresh, new and colourful. Have a look: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxMdH3_4vSw

Do you want to hear something new, exciting and completely different? Then you should definitely check out the band called “The 45s”. They are an upcoming British boy band from Carlisle and we had the honour of doing two music videos for them! It all started in Camden where we were filming them having a walk around stables market and such while messing around. We got some really cool footage. In the evening they had a gig in this area so we filmed them while performing. The audience loved them and so did/do we! These boys are extremely talented as they are only teenagers and write all of their music themselves. You should really check them out: http://vimeo.com/90117058

Enough about music now. We also have a new shoot for Bounce BMX coming up. Do you remember our last shoot for them? It was thrilling and a great success. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, have a look: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4J6fEe42zNM. These riders were just incredible and our video shows pretty good what you can do with such an awesome mini bike!

Naomi Thomas

It was in 2009 when Naomi Thomas got the diagnose of breast cancer. One year later she got told by the doctors that it was no longer curable. At this point she had been engaged with her fiance for three years. The news of not being able to marry and the possibility of dying was devastating for her and her family. Even though, it was one of her biggest wishes to get married. With all her health problems and her family still in shock, this seemed to be impossible… At the end of 2011 a wedding planner offered help and even organised her wedding with the help of wedding suppliers who could work for free.

On the 7th of June 2012 Naomi and Graham finally got married. After the success of the wedding and the fact that one of her biggest wishes came true, Naomi founded the The Wedding Wishing Foundation. It’s goal is to help others with serious and terminal illnesses (just like Naomi) to get married. Later on Naomi said: “I was overwhelmed with the enormous generosity of all who helped to make my wedding a perfect day and it was made even more special knowing that without their support, it simply would not have happened.”

In 2013 Naomi received three awards for her foundation: The Wedding Ideas Magazine Award, The Daily Mail Inspirational Women of the Year as well as The Caring Person Of The Year award.

With her story Naomi inspired others with more or less no hope of fulfilling their dreams of getting married. She is an amazing and very inspiring woman. We are very proud to be in the position of working with her. With her positive attitude towards everything she’s not only an idol for everyone with a terminal illness but also for everyone else.

At the ceremony of the 2013 Wedding Ideas Magazine Award we took some great pictures of her:

If you want to help this foundation you can do this by donating. More information about her, the foundation and how to donate can be found on her website: http://www.weddingwishingwell.org.uk/About-Us.html

Union J

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a feature film and psychology

Today we had a very interesting shoot in our studio! It was part of a feature film which is going to be released this April. We had this huge green paper as a backdrop and four lights up for the shoot. Basically it was supposed to be like an interview with a question followed by an answer. I was helping them so it was my part to read the question. A book author and psychologist/scientist called Chris answered the question. His answers will be shown in the film so you could say that I was involved in a feature film. How cool is that?! We also had a professional videographer just for that shoot. Everything went pretty good. Chris was talking about the brain and its chemical effects, the heart and its importance as well as our mysterious mind. I was quite fascinated by his theories. In fact they seemed to be a bit similar to some theories of Siegmund Freud or Nietzsche! I think that the understanding of how our brain and our mind/consciousness work is very important and fascinating at the same time. In the end the shoot took us about four hours but we got some very good footage. I also learned quite a lot today! Not only about videography but also about the brain and our minds in general. All in all it was a very interesting and cool day.

portobello market and other places

The day began like every other day. I got up, walked to the office and started doing the things I usually do. We still have some problems with the director by the way. He’s causing us major trouble at the moment… So basically we were discussing what to tell him and how to contac the company he works for. He hasn’t come back to us so far.
Today was such a lovely day with a lot of sunshine so my boss told me to go and hand some flyers to potential new clients. It was my job to go to Notting Hill Gate, walk around all those small and cute shops and give them our flyers. So I went there with the tube and started my mission as soon as I arrived. Unfortunately there weren’t as many suitable shops as I hoped… Most of them were either full of tourist stuff and too small so that they didn’t need product photography or they already had a photographer. Anyways it was nice to have a little walk around places and explore so I had a nice time. Right now I’m really tired though from all of this walking. Well, it was fuh and I’m looking forward to my next task!

a difficult director and an umbrella

My day began (as usual) at 10 in the morning at the office. I was sorting out the things I did yesterday and thinking of my tasks for today as my boss told me about this director from the last job who was making a big fuzz out of everything. Some people can be so annoying… The first thing was that he didn’t do his job (that he was supposed to do) properly, the second thing was that he was blaming us for every single thing that didn’t go right for him that day and the third thing was that he was blaming us for loosing his oh so precious umbrella. Out of all the things that he was complaining about he just didn’t seem to be able to get over the tragic loss of his umbrella. He wasn’t prepared well enough for the job and right now he was blaming us for literally everything. His work wasn’t even done properly but he still wants the full amount of money. Now we are supposed to deal with the lack of footage from that day, with even more work as well as with the director mourning his umbrella…

So in order to satisfy the poor director a tiny bit it was my job today to bring him his radio and a hard drive to get the footage. After I left the office and went to the tube station, it turned out that his office was almost at the other side of London. I ended up taking three different Underground lines but I managed to get there. I have to admit that the office building where I dropped the package off looked quite nice though. Afterwards I made my way back to the office and did some research on our new webpage and its tools. That was an interesting day though!