Mount Edgecumbe

Today we had a trip to Mount Edgecumbe as we had a client shoot on their grounds. When arriving there we had a short talk from the owner of the area who told us what he was looking for. The council have agreed to let the people of Mount Edgecumbe to have their own public website to try and attract the public. There's a lot of issues with the area at the moment as they're under threat of being knocked down and completely modernized and recreated as it's not being visited enough. In order to keep Mount Edgecumbe in the same state it's been for decades we need to do something . They wanted us to take pictures and videos of Mount Edgecumbe in all of it's glory to celebrate the place. They wanted imagery for their new website which is going to hopefully attract people to visit more often. Mount Edgecumbe is such a lovely natural place to visit, whether it be to walk, have lunch, relax, have a family day out or even take out some me time. They want to get the word out that Mount Edgecumbe is the place to go. When having the talk he went over the sorts of things they wanted documented and what they would need for the website and brochure. I've written a list to go over these things:

• Clear shots of the house

• Advertisement for the cafes, shops and artist galleries/workshops

• Shots to represent the outdoor areas eg beach/pond

• Kind, happy place to be

• Welcoming environment

I found the day very fun and interesting as I haven't been there since I was around 6 or 7 so it was great to see things which I remembered from 10 or so years ago. I really enjoyed looking around at all of the cafes, the house and the artist workshops. It was the second client based shoot I had taken part in and I definitely enjoyed working to someone elses criteria instead of my own self-lead projects.

The first step to processing my images is contact sheets. I downloaded all of my images onto the computer and then printed them as contact sheets using Photoshop. Below is all of the images I took today with annotations and my favourite shots outlined.

The next step was editing my favourite shots so of course I selected the favourites and copied them to a separate folder ready to edit. I went through them all one by one and edited them all using Photoshop. I have selected my favourite edited shots as you can see below.

The first shot was by far my favourite as I feel it best describes the little shop I was capturing. The shop is full of little gifts from handmade soaps to stuffed and ornamental toys, from hand crafted candles to knitted baby clothes. When in the little shop I wanted to capture a product which was colourful and exciting with the rest of the shop in the background. To get this picture I focused on the foreground products as they're very lovely and I thought this composition was very flattering for the shop overall. When editing I made sure the colours were all bright and eye grabbing as there's nothing worse that a mess of colour. I think the composition of this piece is definitely what makes it as flattering and interesting as it is. I feel like if I had changed the way I was looking at the display it wouldn't be so interesting as you're getting quite a natural, raw look just how you would see it in person. One thing which could definitely make this shot better would be if the yellow tint wasn't so strong. It's something I'm going to have a play around with on Photoshop before submitting to the client.

The next photograph reminds me of something you'd see on a brochure or leaflet advertising a restaurant or venue. I enjoyed taking the photographs in The Orangery as it was very quite and there was only a small amount of people. I wanted to show the beauty of the main restaurant/cafe hall along with the details in the room. If I had taken the photograph from a different angle and didn't include the cafe bar/till it wouldn't have been so clear as to what it was. Capturing everything in one shot means you can easily see what it is and it feels very intimate and personal which is what is great about it. You can easily see the amount of outdoors which is visile by seeing where the windows are and the amount of light is being let through them. The shot is very harmonious in sense of colours and tone as all of the colours are on the same sort of scale (browns, creams, greens and oranges). Because of this, it makes you feel like it's a calm, chilled out setting. Rule of thirds takes a place in this shot along with depth of field as the third to the left is in focus and the main foreground detail whereas the other two thirds (middle and right) are less focused and background details.

I'm very proud of some of my work from today and I'm going to submit my favourite pieces to the client and hope they get chosen for the website or brochure.