Innovation
We were approached by DMU because they wanted a series of portraits showing tenants at their business centre. The photographs would form an image bank that DMU could draw upon for all kinds of promotional needs, such as use on their website, in brochures, posters and so on.
The images were to be used for encouraging new business start ups in the region. The brief stated that the images should target a range of people, from recent graduates to mature students and working people outside of education.
After talking with the tenants and client we decided to get some of the tenants to come out of their office environment for the shoot. This was because we wanted a varied and interesting set of images that really showed the great range of business activities that take place in the centre. This led us to shoot in a wide variety of locations around the DMU campus and Leicester city. Locations included science labs, product manufacturing labs, club venues, coffee bars, and even a rooftop. We went for a more natural ′at work′ style in these photos as we wanted to avoid the typical ′smile at the camera′ scenario in order to get a sense of the dynamic and innovative range of business activities. There were a couple of exceptions to this rule where we set up the mobile studio space and shot tenants against a black background. This enabled us to get striking images even when the tenants were not able to spend time out of the office building.