Hidden flash
In this industry, you often get to go where others don’t – on trawlers in the North Sea, behind the scenes at airports, in restricted areas cordoned off by the emergency services, or in clinical environments. I found myself visiting two separate hospitals for two different clients, but using the same technique to shoot interesting PR briefs.
The first image was shot at the Centre for Life in Newcastle city centre for NHS Innovations North. They oversee the development of new medical technologies from inception to implementation, and my role was to document various innovations that were being rolled out in the clinical environment. In this case, it was the brand new IVF cabinets which were being installed. I had a narrow window of opportunity, as the whole room was about to be designated as a totally sterile environment later that day – a process which involved the room being made bacteria-free, to eliminate the risk of contamination during the IVF transfer process. I had two research staff available for the shoot, and had to work quickly. Clinical environments are, by their very nature…..clinical. That means white, with white equipment, and fluorescent strip lights. This makes for a very boring picture, so it’s important to try and add a bit of colour if possible. Here, I shot with a flashgun on-camera, bounced off the white ceiling to light the staff members, then another one fitted with a deep red gel positioned behind the glass cabinet. This contrast between red and blue made the shot pop out at the viewer. A simple touch that worked wonders. Unfortunately, the government funding for this project was cut off by the incoming Conservative-led coalition, so the job never got finished. Thanks David.
The same process was adopted for the shot taken for Roche Diagnostics at the Queen Elizabeth hospital in Gateshead. They had just installed millions of pounds worth of equipment capable of testing all types of body fluids for various nasty things, and I was despatched to get lots of suitable PR images for the national press, industry publications, and promotional material. The environment was pretty boring as usual, so I decided to bung a bit of light into one of the pieces of equipment to highlight its contents. The natural light in the building was fluorescent tubes, which cast a nasty green hue onto everything, so I needed to attach a green correction filter to bothe flashguns. This made the light from the flashes, the same colour as the light from above. the white balance setting in-camera was then changed to fluorescent, so that the whole picture was balanced.
So, the next time you find yourself facing the prospect of taking a boring picture, think about adding another light source to create some point of interest – create a shadow, backlight, introduce colour (it works best in industrial settings).
