Lifestyle Portraiture from Mike Hubbard on Vimeo.
The last 3 weeks have been hectic!! I really don’t know where to start!
Over the last 2 weeks I have been lucky enough to have received photography training from 2 totally different sources! The first week was at the Defence School of Photography, RAF Cosford, which was nice and local. This is part of my training programme with my TA unit Media Operations Group (Volunteers), getting me up to the standard to work as part of the media gathering combat camera teams that are on operations around the world. Over the week at DSOP I received training in Static Camera Surveillance, it was a really interesting week, a bit back to basics to start with as the course is tailored for those who have not handled an SLR before but it really never hurts to work on your foundations again, we worked on Manual focus and exposure all week as you can’t rely on auto focus when your hiding in a bush! By the end of the week I’d got my hands on the 600mm lens, got to grips with photographing number plates at distance on moving vehicles amongst many other things and finished top of the class! Mind you I think that was down to bringing the teacher an apple each morning!
So the next week… well I had a great phone call during the last day of my course in Cosford! Well 2 actually, one from Catherine Connor and the other from Terry Hope the editor of Photo Pro magazine. A while back I actually wrote into Photo pro magazine as they were doing a monthly feature helping out photography businesses, I wrote in explaining I was just getting setup, just buying a house hoping to use part of it as a studio and could they help me with some guidance, really not thinking they would pick me and they did! Much to my surprise I had a call from Catherine Connor who at the time was part of Annabel Williams’s contemporary photographic training, fantastic!! Catherine arranged to come down and meet me and discuss my plans, we met and talked about my ideas, Catherine had a look around my new build to try and get an idea of my vision and really quizzed me thoroughly about my plans, she offloaded shed loads of advice and ideas and that was that, but it wasn’t….
When Catherine came to see me, she gave me some home truths about running a successful photography studio and the fact I really couldn’t run it from my home, she suggested meeting clients at other studios, hiring the space or even meeting clients out at coffee shops and taking some photos outside, all this was very new to my bubble the bubble I had created, I had a plan in my head and that was the plan I had convinced myself would work. When you’ve some one like Catherine, the best in the business advising you otherwise it’s a bit of a knock back. When Catherine left I didn’t totally understand what I needed to do or maybe I didn’t want to understand the drastic change in direction I needed…. Catherine luckily had a plan, the phone calls I received were both to ask the same thing, am I available to go on a course next week? When Catherine explained the course if I could have, I think I would have bitten her hand off but the phone was in the way!
Catherine Connor and Annabel Williams parted there business and Catherine has set up her own new empire with Jane Breakell at a beautiful location in Cumbria, Dalton Hall, The Stable Yard and the studio is part of the old stable yard converted into new stylish units that still keep the character of an old stable yard, ideal for photography training. The new business is called Aspire Photography Training and the course Catherine put me on was The A to Z of Photography and Business. The course was 4 days, fast paced and packed full of information! all of it brilliant and vital to any photographer setting up a business. The main thing I took away from the 4 days for my business was to knock it all down and start from scratch! Everything Catherine had tried to explain to me weeks ago suddenly clicked, the penny dropped. To actually run a business I need to create a business, it needs to run like a business, it needs to feel like a business and it needs to look like a business. The most important thing is my brand, I don’t have a shop front but I have a product, my photography is something people want to buy but with no shop to display it in my brand is based around my website and me, if the shop looks shabby do you go in…
I now don’t even think I want to take many photos in the studio especially of family’s, I love the lifestyle concept, your not just selling some photos, your providing a great experience to a family, being invited to spend time with your clients family given the opportunity to capture those amazing moments of happiness and emotion, getting chance to see the natural characters within their family dynamic that you just can’t in a studio environment, don’t get me wrong in the studio you can still create and capture stunningly beautiful images that captivate a different style of emotion but I get a different feel from lifestyle photography. Then once the images are captured it’s all about there presentation, they aren’t just jpegs to stick on a CD, they are portraits and deserve to go into beautiful frames, on a high quality canvas or acrylic to really appreciate the beauty of the images.
The A-Z course is fantastic it not only gives you the tools to get all your ducks in a row but Aspire take each duck and explain it in detail, leaving you with piles of useful notes to refer back to. Go on the course as a skilled photographer wanting to set up a business and you will come away with the training to set your business up from scratch and have the foundations to make it a success. Bearing in mind Catherine and her team have helped set up some of the most successful photographers in the business; you can tell the course is based on mountains of experience, all the lessons learned and mistakes made.
The A-Z course will give any one planning on setting up a photography business the perfect foundations to build something amazing but also provide the tools to build and run that business successfully, a lot to do in 4 days but Aspire do it perfectly!
We explored the concept of Lifestyle photography, with the help from 2 great photographers, Ian Scott and Stewart Randall. We had a day with each, they were both very knowledgeable and brilliant photographers! It was nice to be taught by 2 different photographers as they were both very different in there choices of equipment and technique, it just proved that there is no concrete right or wrong way, the fundimentals are the same but you can go about it your own way and still produce the goods. Lifestyle is something that has passed me by until now I’ve been so very blinkered with, family portraits, white back drop and smile! Of course they are great and will always have there place, I intend to keep working hard on the mail/female fashion and style studio shoots and hopefully some more commercial work, so the studio is always going to be some where I love to work! I’m actually booked onto a studio lighting course tomorrow with Damien Lovegrove to fine tune my studio skills.
So what now, i’ve just got freebird on board to begin the redevelopment of Mike Hubbard Photography and I’m really keen to get stuck into Lifestyle portraits, especially with the autumn colours and winter knocking at the door! Its colourful wellies, hats and scarf season!!