ArtReach Liberty UK Festival Corby

Leicester Festival Event Photographer

Just before the UK lockdown I was re-introduced to my old friend, and singer of one of my favourite bands I was in at college ‘Gary Cicinskas’.

1993 College Rock Concert, Gary in the middle, myself on the right.

Gary now works for ArtReach, a great company that helps fund and put on great art festivals around the UK.

The event I shot in Feb 2020 was the handing over of a cheque for funding from the European Arts Council, presented by the Mayor of Leicester, Sir Peter Soulsby.

The event was a success, Gary liked my work, and indeed offered me a couple of other shoots.. for Arts Festivals around the East Midlands.

Sadly COVID had other plans and all festivals were either cancelled or postponed.

On the 19th February 2022, Corby held a Liberty Festival. This included various crafts around the town centre, disco litter pickers, Virtual Reality and 4 amazing performances at the Cube Theatre.

My job during the day was to capture the atmosphere of activities, show the general public enjoying the festival.

Check out the gallery below for some images of the day, there are also links to the videos below.

Festival highlight video

Pete Martin Photography on BBC One

Did I ever think I would be on BBC One??

Leicester Portrait Photographer on National Television, BBC ONE.

Towards the end of January 2022, Sukh Kaur (from Matched by Sukh Kaur https://www.matcheduk.com ) approached me regarding a BBC One Documentary that she was being featured in.

The documentary, ‘A Believers Guide To’ was about Sikh dating services, and Sukh is amazing at this!

Having previously worked with Sukh on her branding photos, Of course I said YES!

It was my job to be filmed taking photo’s of Kiran, who was looking for a life partner. These photos would be used for not only the BBC Documentary, but also all marketing, and of course… Kiran’s dating profile!

No Pressure then!

The shoot went fine, Sukh and Kiran got on so well, like they had known each other for years!!

The two lady camera crew were also brilliant at directing the shots, and then staying well enough back to let myself and Kiran get on with the photoshoot.

Behind the Scenes, Thanks Sukh!

Personally, I think the photos turned out great. It’s been amazing to see them being used in all sorts of marketing. Take a look at a short video clip below, and some more images from the shoot in the gallery a bit further down.

Here is the link to the full eposide on BBC iPlayer A Believers Guite To

Leicester Branding Photographer

Next, we have to talk about ‘Branding’. 

I had an amazing video call with two ladies from ‘The Orange Notebook’, a brand marketing agency over in Birmingham. There is actually 3 of them, Beatrice however is based in Sweden! 

Their company needed a bank load of images for their website and social media, we put a plan together to create the images they needed. It was decided that we would meet at Medicine, a coffee shop in Birmingham that they often frequent. We would use Medicine as location 1, getting individual and group shots. A local photo studio was also booked so they we could get some more varied shots, such as clean studio images with the orange background to tie in with their branding. This was a really fun shoot, the 4 hours went really fast. Sadly I was still suffering from the effects of COVID and was really tired towards the end. I don’t mind saying, I slept for 13 hours when I got home!!

I also competed a brilliant branding shoot for the fabulous Sukh Kaur and her bespoke matchmaking service, ‘Matched by Sukh Kaur’. 

We met up at the Exchange bar in Leicester, grappled a coffee and talked about the shoot. This shoot was originally going to be a simple headshot session, but after Sukh saw some sample images from The Orange Notebook shoot, an upgrade was ordered.

The setting in Exchange bar is always good for photos, and the coffee is pretty amazing too! We shot in 3 different areas before heading to my favourite studio in Leicester, XYZ.

At XYZ we used the classic white and grey for headshots and also positioned their graffitied sofa near the exposed walls for a more urban looking shot. 

Very soon there will be a personal branding page added to my wesbite!

I can’t explain how much I enjoyed these shoots, it’s a different process to my normal portraits and headshots.. and if you know anything about me, you’ll know I enjoy a creative challenge. Branding shoots tick all the boxes for me

An update from November 2021....

So, what’s been happing in the world of Pete Martin Photography??!

I’m going back to November 2021, and tell you about a few shoots that we completed.

After contracting COVID-19 in late October, I was released from isolation after the full 10 days and went straight into an event for the wonderful charity in Leicester that is Menphys. https://www.menphys.org.uk/hub

Menphys were being presented with the prestigious Queens Award. It was a lovely 2 hour event attended by many local businesses and supporters of the charity. Amazing food from Ben Knowles aka https://benskitchenleicester.com/ as well.

Below are a few images from the event.

Another shoot I particularly enjoyed was Moneywise Plus. These guys help people back into work with such activities like CV Writing. It was nice to see how they help all types of people in the community. Big thanks to Tim from BRanagh PR for recommending my skills for this assignment.

https://www.moneywiseplus.co.uk/

https://www.branaghpr.com/

More updates coming, and this year I WILL blog more!!

Over and out

Pete

Location Headshots

Leicester Urban Headshots!

Last week it was urban headshot time.

Not everyone wants a studio looking headshot, but everyone needs a quality headshot to stop people scrolling past on platforms such as LinkedIn!

Rachael from insurance brokers Morgan Betts & Co is this person.

During the Zoom consultation the week before we discussed various options and locations to achieve the desired results. I took my full mobile studio which included numerous backdrops, studio flash, softboxes etc.

All of the final images however used nothing more than natural light and a hand held reflector!!

We were blessed with an overcast day, which meant no harsh shadows on the face. I used the reflector to bounce a little light back to help create perfect even lighting across Rachael’s face.

Would you have your next headshot outdoors? or would you prefer the studio/indoor environment?

Drop me an email or give me a call for more information.

What's been happening??!

So, It’s October.

Following the UK’s COVID-19 Lockdown, things went a little quiet for me. I did 4 jobs in 3 months. But thats ok, I manajed to home school Callie, my 7yr old Daughter.

Around August things started to pick up. In fact, this August was best in 4yrs!. Sometimes 3 shoots a day.

These jobs ranged from clothing shoots, headshots for individuals & businesses, 4k video confrencing for a court trial in Hong Kong (yes, really!), enviromental portraits and some product work

I’ve updated my website with a few new images, below are a few.

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