RAMBLINGS, BEHIND THE SCENES, THOUGHTS AND MUSES FROM PHOTOGRAPHER EDWARD FURY
It was great to be asked to shoot imagery for the Serum Cheat sheet event on Lookfantastic recently. Pastel tones, blocks and a hero angle made for a set of striking images. I always love seeing my work in use! Thanks to the guys at Blow Creative for the commission.
Photography: Edd Fury
Stylist: Jaine Bevan
Retoucher: Maria Protokova
Agency: Blow Creative
Client: L'Oréal
I think many of us will agree, 2021 has been a strange year. As we look forward with optimism for the year ahead I wanted to look back over some of the many highlights from the past 12 months that made 2021 an enjoyable year of work.
2021; A year that saw me burn through 2 cameras, 7 modelling bulbs, 2 magic arms, 1 flash tube and a lens.
125 days on set shooting 74 projects for clients. 5.5TB of data. (No wander I was tired by the end of it)
A personal project that has collected 4 awards, 3 overall/ category winners. (Creative Communication Awards; Other / Photography; Winner - Creativepool Annual 2021 Peoples Choice winner, Photography category - Creativepool Annual 2021 Bronze, Photography category - VIPA 2021 Still Life Category Winner)
Id like to offer a huge thank you to all the great clients, crew and retouchers who have made 2021 a hectic, but wonderful year of work.
Recent test with stylist Jaine Bevan using fruit and veg from the local greengrocer. We kept the plastic bag in too, a little comment on the use of single use plastics too where a paper bag could have done the same job. Retouched by Ben Allen.
At the start of the year I took some time to scratch my head and think about doing something that I had wanted to do most of the previous year, but not really found the time.
Most of the liquids that I had shot that year previous had been contained and predictable. What I mean by that was either in a bottle or a glass, behaving as you would expect in a bottle or a glass. Freezing liquids is much more difficult than you would probably think, Limitations on equipment is usually the biggest hurdle. I’d been freezing people pouring drinks for now so I wanted to try and take it up a notch, both technically and creatively. I like a challenge.
I’d had the Coca Cola Signature Mixers in the studio for a while waiting for me to pull my finger out. The original idea was to take each flavouring and look at the ingredients and use those as the elements around the bottles. Saying that, some of the ingredients weren’t that easy to get hold of and it would mean that each bottle would always sit on its own because of the limitations with the ingredients.
Fast froward some days of thinking, planning and shooting and we had the elements needed to create the final image. Ben Allen (https://benallendigital.com/) retoucher extraordinaire/ wizard put all of the assets together seamlessly, and here we have the final images.
The shoot gave us a total of 5 assets, the main image which the angles and composition were set in the camera, gripped in cleverly. Splashes were then shot against a blank bottle and then individually to create enough assets to fill the gaps. You can see part of the retouch process below, with some of the asset images and the final stills too!
So here are a selection of some of the frames that went together to create the final image. It got pretty messy in the studio, but definitely worth doing I think!!
If you’d like to see some more behind the scenes features over the course of the year - stay tuned! Throughout some of our more exciting projects I’ll snap some behind the scenes images and video for you to see how some of the images were created!
I was recently commissioned to photograph a 3D printed bionic arm made by Open Bionics, who are based in Bristol, for an editorial piece for Dyson:On magazine. Along with a couple of hero images, the client required a contact sheet of images with the arm hiking everyday objects.
It was particularly challenging as the arm, unless worn, doesn’t grip or do anything. Everything just springs back to the default position, which worked perfectly for the main images here, but not so much for gripping and holding things. So with some precise wedging of the joints in the fingers, I was slowly able to manipulate the hand into the desired positions to hold these objects. And yes, I ate the chocolate bar as soon as we were done.
Back in the autumn last year we were asked to shoot the exclusive UK release of a collaboration between Louis Roederer and French designer Philippe Starck. Brut Nature 2012 was a continuation of a collaboration between the Champagne house and the designer which started some years previous.
The release was exclusive to the Beaufort Bar at The Savoy Hotel, London for a month prior to general sale in the UK, so what better location to shoot it in! I’ve shot in the Beaufort Bar before, its a really stunning venue, But it does provide some challenges to shooting in there as its a contrast of black walls, gold detailing and mirrors.
We spent the day creating key visuals for both the Blanc and Rose variations that set the bottle in the beautiful setting of the bar. Turns out that there 244 year history, Louis Roederer have never used a British photographer either for any of the imagery they have had produced, so that felt quiet special too!
Hope you enjoy the images as much as we did shooting them (and testing the product!).
