Hats For Weddings & Events | Manchester Commercial Photography

Hats For Weddings & Events

Jane Anne Designs are a well established and fast growing hat company based in Denton, Manchester.

In December 2011 they were looking to hire a Manchester commercial photographer to photograph their new range of fascinators and hats for weddings and events

Like a lot of SME’s, their existing brochure had been produced using photography taken by themselves with either friends, family or colleagues modelling for some main images.

They were investing in a new brochure and improving their online presence with a couple of new web sites. They wanted to have great images and accepted that they needed a professional photographer to assist them

From the initial consultation, I advised that this kind of shoot would need a professional model. We looked at some of their nearest competitor’s/supplier’s brochures and web sites and concluded that hats on manikins had to be replaced with a real person. They increased the budget for the shoot to allow for hiring in the services of a female model for the day.

With around 20 hats and 30 fascinators to photograph, I anticipated a good, full days shoot and employed the services of Jenny Brook, a super fantastic model who had been highly recommended.

The shoot was planned for late January 2012 and the brief was to shoot the wedding hats and fascinators in one day if possible. I wanted to get a number of great signature shots as well for the brochure cover and use as full page images throughout the spread of the brochure.

Most of the product shots were planed to be done within the studio and hopefully; weather permitting, we were going to get some images outside. Typically the day of the shoot arrived and the weather was terrible, with rain forecast for most of the day. Not the kind of weather I wanted for a set of images portraying lovely spring and summer weddings.

Jen arrived followed shortly after by the wedding hats and fascinators. We sorted the hats into styles and colours for efficiency of the shooting process and so that we could as much use from each outfit that Jen had brought for the shoot.

For the set up, I used a Nikon D3S, tethered to my Mac Book Pro. To make the shoot run as smooth as possible, I had set up the lighting before Jen and Steve from Jane Anne Designs arrived. Having done a couple of test shots to get the metering/exposure right, saved half an hour or so from the process.

The main light source was an Elinchrom Octa with a couple of 60cm soft boxes placed in various positions as required. I used the camera for the most part on a tripod to ensure tac sharp images as well as making it easier to keep the setup as consistent as possible.

We finished the photo shoot with time to spare, which was a pleasant surprise for us all. I attempted to get a few outdoor shots in-between showers, but felt the best shots were already in the bag.

I ended up providing the client with about 780 images! With such a large number it was impossible to fine tune or retouch this amount and retain the set budget. Since the shoot, I have picked some of my favourite shots and given them a touch of magic.

I also wanted to show the benefits of having professionally shot corporate or commercial photography, in a before and after kind of way.

I know a lot of businesses use and abuse stock photography for their websites and brochure material. There is nothing wrong at all with stock photographs per-se. There are some fantastic, very talented photographers producing these images. Its just not personal to the business. Obviously Jane Anne Designs would not have been able to use stock imagery as it was all about their own products. Hopefully you can see from these images that there is clearly a benefit of hiring a professional photographer to produce images for your business.

Ladies Wedding and Event Hats & Fascinators

Some Of My Favourite From The Shoot

Once we had completed the wedding hats and fascinators, there were a number of fashion/everyday hats that Mike from Jane Anne asked us to photograph. Some of these were my absolute favourites from the day.

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