24 hours with the photography function
4 photographers support 8 teams in 24 hours making a not unusual day in the life of Imperial Communications.
Image © Thomas Angus / Imperial College London
I’m going to go from 11am (after the morning catch up) to 11am the following day.
To begin I take over the photography studio equipment to the sound studio on the 5th floor of Sherfield, and set up ready to take some images of our new cohort of Student bloggers. These need to be shot on a white background to be cut out in photoshop, so that the background is transparent. These images will be used by the Student recruitment team on the student bloggers site here…
Image © Thomas Angus / Imperial College London
Whilst I’m shooting the student bloggers in the makeshift studio, one of our freelance photographers Dave Guttridge arrives to start shooting this years scholars introduction event for the Regular Giving Team, which also involves a LOT of headshots. This is Rima Mustafa who is doing a PhD in the School of Public Health.
Image © Dave Guttridge / Imperial College London
While Dave is finishing up his headshots around the campus, I’m wrapping up with the bloggers, and moving over to Huxley to shoot Toby Wiseman for his inaugural lecture images for the Advancement team. Here Toby is preparing the background for the shot by starting to write equations relating to a quantum description of Einstein’s theory of spacetime on the blackboard. I don’t understand what any of that means, but the equations look pretty.
Image © Thomas Angus / Imperial College London [Click Image to expand]
We also roped in Stav Zalel, a PhD student in the causal set approach to quantum gravity for some interaction shots, which will get further use in the prospectus and other materials for the Design and Editorial team.
After this I head back to Sherfield to pack down all the studio lights and equipment from the earlier Bloggers shoot, and move it back to our base in Bessemer. Dave has now left campus to workup his headshots for delivery. I’m now back in the office catching up with the day.
Image © Thomas Angus / Imperial College London [Click Image to expand]
Meanwhile over in Westminster another of our freelancers, Fergus Burnett has started work shooting the rather glamorous looking Alumni evening Reception at the House of Lords for the Alumni Team.
Image © Fergus Burnett / Imperial College London
9am and I’m over in White City at the new MSRH building. I’m here to shoot our new Grantham Institute Professor Andreas Kafizas, while trying to also show off the shiny new spaces and equipment there. This room contains many such shiny things that I probably shouldn’t get too close too.
Image © Thomas Angus / Imperial College London
Meanwhile another of our freelancers Jo Meiszowski is shooting the Blast Injury conference for the Centre for Blast Injury Studies, at the Royal Geographic Society, which is a beautiful venue.
Image © Jo Meiszowski / Imperial College London
Whilst that is still happening, after finishing with Andreas, I take a crafty detour to see if I can talk my way into the new NMR lab in the Molecular Sciences Research Hub (MSRH).
I knew from a recent visit when accompanying the the Provosts tour, that it was rather dramatic and I wanted to get pictures to show off the space in action for the College Image Library.
Image © Thomas Angus / Imperial College London [Click Image to expand]
Fortunately I was permitted in, and to shoot, and some kind students let me shoot them too. Coincidentally these images also turned out to be useful immediately, as I had a request for images of the NMR space for a presentation by Alan Armstrong to the College Council that evening.
Image © Thomas Angus / Imperial College London [Click Image to expand]
I got papped in action by one of our impromptu subjects while in action at this point… (Thanks Hui Yee)
Image © Hui Yee / Imperial College London [Click Image to expand]
That uses up the last of the 24 hours and it’s 11am again, time to see the building manager and security at the I-hub to prep for the following mornings group shot of the College council, and return to co-ordinating more shoots and processing the completed ones.
The College Photography Guidelines
There are 4 photographers in this post, but all the images knit together well as we all work together to follow our own Imperial College London Photography Guidelines to ensure a consistent look and feel to all of our photography.
Visit the new Imperial College London Photography Toolkit here.
Learn more about photography
Watch this introduction to photography video course on Lynda.com (College users have free access to Lynda courses)