Prêt a Manger

Prêt a Manger is a leading brand in the British High Street. Having built a reputation off offering the very best in freshly made sandwiches and developing their own unique style Prêt stands out from it’s rivals by its quality.
I was commissioned by Prêt a Manger to capture these qualities for a brochure they were producing to be used to showcase the brand around the world.
The Shoot took place in 3 city across the UK. Each shop is quite unique in either its location, size or layout so a varity of stores had to be chosen to reflect this.
The art director gave me a verbal brief of the style he was looking for rather than a list of shots to take. It was then down to me to come up with the goods.
With a shoot like this there was not one particular shot that was needed, more of a library of images to capture brief and help support the story that was being told..
Until you are there on the day and looking through the lens you are never sure of what you are going to get. There are so many elements you have to take into account on a shoot. Ranging from what the weather is like to how busy the store should be, putting to the customers and staff at easy before photographing them. You need to make sure you have covered every angle that the client may want and also some they haven’t.
Like with every thing experience is the best tool you can have. Having covered a wide variety of shoots it puts you in a good position. Knowing the pitfalls that lay on any job helps you side step them neatly and gives you the ability to turn in a great job every time.

Click here to see more images from the shoot.

This section is to give you an insight in to how some of the photos on this web site were achieved.

For some time I have been working on a series of images for RAC showing all types of breakdown recovery situations that they are called out to and the range of locations where they take place.
Bad weather always brings a higher than normal demand and the brief was to capture not only the service they provide but also showing their human side.
Snow is one of the most extreme weather conditions for the motorist but predicting when and where it’s going to happen is just as difficult.
We were on standby for weeks waiting for some snow. When there was a light dusting we managed to get some shots, for the more extreme conditions we would have to go further afield which we did.
The Peak District got a severe weather warning of snow in the next 24hours so it was all systems go.
A 4x4 truck was hired, RAC Patrol vans scheduled to be in the right locations and models were sourced from a local agency as train and motorways may have been blocked due to bad weather.
The shoot was spread over 2 days and in that time locations had to be found to achieve the effect we were looking for.
The results of all the planning were worth it and by the end of the shoot we had managed to create a library of shots that will be used to illustrate the commitment RAC gives to its members.

Chapelfield Shopping Centre in Norwich held a competition to find a Cover Girl for their magazine.
Jade was the winner and her prize was to be photographed for the cover of the magazine and to receive a professional portfolio.
To get an image for any magazine cover involves a lot more than just taking 1 photo. This shoot lasted around 3 hours involving professional make up and hairdressing as well as styling the model with different outfits and accessories. At the end of a session you might have anything up to 300 pictures to choose from, these are then shortlisted to 3 or 4 different versions for the magazine cover.

The brief was to show in pictures the experience of taking a trip on the Juno, which is a flat bottom barge.
I thought this would be a nice job sailing on the high seas, little did I know how high above the sea or close to it I would be. I have an adventurous spirit when it comes to difficult shots, which was certainly needed for this one.
Lateral thinking can often provide a unique approach to an assignment, so I chose to shoot from different angles - eg.in a dingy and on top of the mast, this made for a very interesting picture.
I was told from the start that we would be having a game of cricket later on but I didn’t realise the barge itself would be on the beach, I can now see the advantage of sailing in this type of vessel.
This is what I like about being a photographer, always having a new challenge rather than just focusing on one type of photography.