Marketing images in Honley, West Yorkshire

Images for The Foresters Arms, in Honley

A while ago I headed over to The Foresters Arms in Honley, West Yorkshire to create some images for their business listing on the Honley website. This was during Covid times so things were a little bit tricky to make somewhere look friendly and inviting.

It’s all about the people

I am always mentioning every shoot is about people. We like people, we want to buy from nice, friendly people it’s what we do. My job is to make those people look friendly and inviting. I had already mentioned but just as usual I found that the landlord/lady are people that don’t like having their pictures taken. Fortunately, this is my speciality and I’ve always got a few tricks up my sleeve for when this happens.

A nice surprise

On arrival, I had a lovely surprise. They had actually set up a makeshift chair out of beer kegs which was a brilliant addition. We now had the perfect starting place and it’s always important to just start somewhere. I could immediately see that they were nervous, so I had to dip into my superpower to get my clients to relax, within a few minutes we were having a laugh and capturing some fab, natural pictures.

Let it go

Sometimes I have to just let things go. I knew that I only had a very short window to capture the landlord/lady as they had places to go and a pub to open so I had to make things quick. I am someone who can be a bit of a perfectionist. In the marquee where I was shooting pictures the background had some banners behind and I really wanted to move them but I had to just let it go. Sometimes you have to work with what you get, it was still good but I can be a little bit OCD about this sort of stuff.

Know your brief

When I am doing marketing photography or personal brand shoots it’s really important to know what you are looking for. Where are the pictures going? How are they going to be used? I knew that these pictures were for the business listing on the Honley website and realistically I need about nine pictures, I do try to get a good variety and tell the story of the business but sometimes you just have to remember the brief. On a side note I always shoot a lot more as I always put one hundred percent into everything that I do.

How long do I have?

Continuting on from the brief, I always have to think how long do I have with the people. I knew my window was twenty minute max with the owners so I knew that I had to capture their pictures first. Anything else could wait. After the people photography I captured shots of drinks, bottles, the bar and generaly scene shots. The photo shoot took around thirty minutes in total so it was job done.

Ideally what I would like to capture

Again, this all comes down to the brief and time but The Foresters have a big emphasis on showing live sport particularly football. In an ideal world I would have been photographing an England world cup match in a Summers evening and capturing all of the people cheering, but we live in a real world and sometimes it’s just not possible.