Seaham Hall spa day
There are jobs that often turn out to be completely different to my initial expectation, and this was one of them. Seaham Hall is a five-star hotel and spa resort near the County Durham coast. It’s one of the region’s nicest resorts, and caters to business and leisure visitors from all over the UK. One of my old contacts in the rag trade recently joined the group in a marketing capacity, and I was the first port of call to shoot some of the newly refurbished suites, and existing facilities throughout the hotel. It was mid-spring, so I put in a prayer to the weather gods the day before to ensure there was enough good sunshine to get the job done – it worked for once! These jobs are usually quite relaxed, and planned in advance, but circumstances often change, as in this case.
The brief was quite complex given the limited time available. The two suites which were to be shot had guests being deposited into them at different times, and they’d been occupied the previous night. This meant that the pressure was on to get the job done before the new guys turned up. Usually, in real-estate shooting there is a trade off between quality and time, but in this case the quality had to be absolutely top-notch and the duration of shooting had to be absolutely minimal. Arghhhhhh.
There were 2 suites which needed multiple wide-views showing the whole room & it’s features, and also a number of nice cameo shots for full page brochure imagery. One of the suites had it’s own outside patio area with a wood-burning hot tub. Three models were being shipped in to provide ballast for hot tub shots, general shots of people relaxing inside and out, and a special image to be used as part of a promotional campaign showing a shopper coming back from a trip. I also had the task of shooting the bar area, and car park. This needed to be done in the space of about 4 hours. Good job I got there early!
The rooms weren’t ready to shoot straight away, so I set up lights, and planned the sequence of images as best I could. I was packing a fair bit of gear including some Bowens 500J flashes with my trusty Travelpak battery unit, a full complement of speed lights. and 3 cameras/full lens range. Unlike real-estate shooting, hotels and other commercial spaces need to be professionally styled and staged for photography. This might mean that furniture is moved from it’s usual position, as what looks great on a two dimensional page or screen might be completely different to what is stylish to the eye as you walk into a space. I didn’t have the luxury of a stylist for this shoot, so had to rely on the very busy hotel service staff to try and get things sorted. Time was most definitely an issue, and this type of pressure can result in small details being omitted. The ideal sequence of events is as follows:
(i) Set up camera and lighting while the stylist(s) go round and do their thing – straightening and steaming curtains, positioning cushions, staging things like flowers and bottles, moving tables and lights, clamping visible cables etc behind chair legs, adding specially sourced props.
(ii) Calculate the overall exposure for the room in line with the brief (dark and moody, or light, high key airy look). Take an initial test frame, & review on a screen with the acting art-director present. adjust position of the camera to ensure lines are straight, and move the elements within the frame until the art director or someone responsible for the final result is happy with the composition.
(iii) Capture the key frame and adjust the lighting until the result is what you’re after. Add the feature lights in sequence with the final desired result. A lot of the final image is constructed in the post-production process, so you need to have a pre-visualisation of the look you’re trying to achieve.
(iv) Repeat the process for every single image.
That’s the ideal way to do commercial jobs when there is sufficient time to do so. Unfortunately, with the pressures of working in an environment shared by the paying public, there is no way of doing things in this manner. My art-director had a very busy role within the hotel, so had to effectively leave me to it, and I didn’t have a dedicated stylist, so had to rely on my own judgement when reviewing the frames. In addition, I had to make my own mind up about what to do with the models for many of the shots, and had literally half an hour to set up and shoot the several key frames needed before the new guests arrived. There were actually wet footprints still on the patio area as we hastily packed our stuff up, and allowed the hassled room service staff to get in and make it guest-ready. Rushing things on-set, or the absence of art direction always leads to a by-product for me – hours and hours of complicated retouching on shots which need to be altered significantly long after the event – cushions replaced, curtains straightened, creases eliminated, and all sorts of magic than can only be done by spending days in front of a Mac with a graphics tablet.
I only had the models for about 90 minutes altogether. They used a posh bathroom to get dressed, and we did the hot tub shots first while the sun was out. I had a staff member to assist me by this time, so I used the natural light to shoot, with a big white reflector being held in position to bounce light back into the shadows. The bushes behind the hot tub were in deep shadow, so I set up a flash with a big brolly attached to illuminate the area behind the models heads. The models themselves were part of the agency run by the Geordie Shore boss Anna Parkin. Canny kids, who clearly enjoyed their time frolicking in the luxury suite for a couple of hours. I shot 4 different viewpoints, then moved everybody into the suite to get the shots needed in there. I needed non-cheesy lifestyle type stuff, so quickly set up suitable simple lighting and got to work fast. I literally had 15 minutes to shoot stuff that would normally take half a day. The shots here needed a bit of work in post before the final output – things like removing castor wheels from the base of the bed etc. The legs and shopping bag shot had to be set up and shot in less than a minute – using two speed lights. I’m a legend honestly.
Once the pressure was off, I could relax a bit with the remaining shots. These were all cameos within the public areas of the hotel. The light had changed in quality entirely due to the strong sunlight being shrouded and diffused by one of the frequent sea frets that pile in from the nearby North Sea. This can make things easier when shooting interiors, as the light is softer, therefore it doesn’t cast huge shadows indoors, and less artificial light is needed. I used my 24mm PC-E architectural lens for all these interior spaces. the 24mm focal length is considered perfect by most interior photographers, as it’s wide enough to capture significant parts of a space, yet doesn’t introduce any distortion at the edges unlike super-wide lenses like my 14mm Nikon. As I had some time to do these shots, I used my usual technique, and shot about 20 frames to be composited later in post-production. the full size images for print look quite spectacular if I’m honest.
The job was finished by around 4pm, and it took a fair old while to hump all my gear to the car. The traffic out of Seaham to the main A19 carriageway was bizarrely congested, so my journey home took close to 2 hours. A full day of shooting takes it’s toll on your physical and mental state, as you’re constantly focused on the technical and aesthetic elements of each image. There wasn’t any time for anything approaching a lunch (luckily I managed a biscuit and cup of coffee).
The following few days were punctuated with many complex retouching requests before the set of images were signed off. I’m optimistic that the day will lead to a complete set of refreshed images for the whole resort when the marketing efforts are re-visited in the future. In the meantime, I’m considering a very rare weekend without the nippers – having facials and massages and all that, at Seaham Hall sometime in the future. I’ve only ever been to one spa in my life – at the Berjaya Tioman Island Resort in Malaysia. Another is due eh?
