Family Holiday 2022

Barcelona & Mataro Spain 2022

Photographers Holiday

It’s no secret the last few months have been incredibly busy work-wise, and I consider myself very fortunate.

We’ve had a holiday in Barcelona booked since July 2020, due to covid it was rescheduled, and rescheduled, and rescheduled!

As a family, for the last few years we have been doing a city break for the first part of the holiday, then a beach for part two. This year we did Barcelona for 4 nights, then Mataro for 4 nights. To be honest, we could have done Barcelona for 8 nights and still had loads to see and do, it’s an amazing city.. with a beach!

We did a few touristy things, saw the sights and found some nice local places to eat.

Being a keen runner, I had to get a run in whilst in Barcelona, and it’s aneven 1200m from the top of La Rambla to the beach. From there I ran mainly across the seafront, and then took a leisurely walk back to the hotel.

Here are a few photos from Barcelona. The last two photos were taken on my big Sony Camera, yes I did take it on a family holiday!!

Did I use it very often? not really. Will I take it again next year? probably not.

All of the other photos were taken on my iPhone 12, which is being upgraded later in the year to the Pro Max version, with the better camera system.

I’m not just a photographer by title, I actually love taking photos, especially of my daughter growing up, so having a great camera around has been brilliant. But the iPhone has a really good camera!

After a 40 minute buss ride, we arrived in Mataro, a small port town just up from Barcelona. This was to be the relaxing beach part of the holiday, and it certainly was.

It’s pretty fair to say there is not much to do there, we walked into town a few times, checked out Central Park, but mainly stayed near our hotel at the port. There were plenty of restaurants around, and the hotel had a great pool with my daughter Callie enjoyed pretty much every day. I also got a run in, but it was a difficult one being 30 Deg C!

Here are a few photos from Mataro.

On the last night we stayed out a little later for sunset. One of my favourite shots to do when I was a wedding photographer was a sunset shot using an off camera flash to light the couple. I have various small flash units that I use when I do on location headshots, so I packed the smallest one and a pop up beauty dish. You can see the results in the last shot above. This is the only thing I can’t replicate with an iPhone.

Overall a really good holiday, but maybe the last one where I take a proper camera!

School Photography

School Photography Leicestershire

Another type of job I really enjoy doing is commercial school photography, the type that gets used in the school prospectus, on the website and on various social media channels.

For the last five years I’ve completed work for Thomas Estley college in Broughton Astley. This year as they has a new classroom build during the pandemic I was asked to come back and get a selection of images of that and some of the classes in the main building.

I started at 9am and by lunchtime I’d done 15 classes. During lunch some staff had new headshots taken. We started the headshots in February 2020, but due to COVID we could not get the whole school done. Just over 350 images were delivered in total.

It’s great to see the photos being used on their website and in and around the school. They have the main corridors wrapped in vinyl wallpaper, with my images on!

Here are a selection from that morning.

Fullhurst College was another school that was booked in in May 2020, but due to COVID was pushed back to 2021, then again to 2022.

Due to Fullhurst being a huge school with two campuses, it took me two days (with a 3rd in reserve) to get every class photographed.

Over the two days the marketing manager Phill took me around all the classes, he was so prepared and knew exactly what was going on in each class and what needed  photographing. On day one we walked 16k, over 20,000 steps!!

My favourite shots from the day were the cooking lesson, and yes, I did get to sample the teachers Eton mess, and I can confirm it was delicious! (See pics below)

Overall from the two days I shot just over 2,000 images, and delivered just under 1,000.

Here are a few samples from the two day shoot.

If you are looking for amazing height quality photography for your school, college or academy, please get in touch via this website.

Leicester School Photography

Party, portraits and another party!

Commercial Portrait & Event Photographer Leicester

Leicester Business Photographer

December 2019 I was asked to photography a works party and awards ceremony, the company was Industria Personel. Industria are a fantastic recruitment agency based in Leicester but with offices in Northampton, Manchester, Coventry, Uxbridge, Germany and Poland!

Fast forward to March 2022 and I get a call from Amanda from Industria about taking staff headshots of all of the senior recruiters in the UK offices in preparation for their new website.

After a few dates were passed around, the Leicester office was booked in. 24 people were photographed in a 2 hour session. A couple of weeks later Coventry was photographed, then Northampton, then Leicester again (as a few people were away and some people from the Birmingham office came over), then Uxbridge and finally Manchester. Phew!!

All in all over 50 people got ‘shot in the face’ by me, and we kept the look consistent in all the different locations.

Here are a few shots from all locations

Leicester Event Photography

Industria also celebrated their 20th year in Business, and I was asked to photograph the party at the Marriott Hotel here in Leicester. This was an incredible night, with lots of photos and stories from the early days of Michale Walker setting up the business. I honestly found that presentation about the company so interesting! The thing that really struck me was the culture, all of the staff genuinely enjoy working for Industria.

It just proved that if you have a great idea, determination and good people around you.. you can achieve anything. 

This year they hit the £50 Million Pound turnover, which is incredible, well done Industria! 

Here are a few photos from the party.

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.