Surface Pattern Photoshoot - 04/05/11

Today was the day of destiny with regards to our Surface Pattern images. We had organised a full day whereby all 65 of the Surface Pattern third years could get their work photographed / provide us with scans or flat artworks. 
A mammoth task but thanks to our prior organisation the shoot went very smoothly. The team + Aidan the photographer started work at 9am - hiring lights, camera, lenses and clearing an adequate space in the SP&PTD studio - a space we noted weeks ago with a vast white wall and also a large (Clean) white table. 
Aidan was obviously taking the shot of student work drops on the wall (shot set per person = long shot, medium, close-up + macro / abstract) but Ian, Charlotte & I found ourselves slotting into roles without explicitly saying anything. 
I was in the role of the receptionist - greeting the queue of students and getting their .tiff scans off their memory stick (checking size / resolution) and filing it away on the Mac then establishing whether they wanted a drop shot on the wall or a table shot then passed them over to the right place. 
As Aidan was taking the drop shots Ian found himself responsible for the table shots in the corner under a skylight that let in lots of glorious natural light. This helped save time on the shoot. So glad I bought my shiny new SLR to the shoot. 
Whilst Ian and I were doing this Charlotte was responsible for dressing the wall drops to get the most out of the designs / shots. It was all very professional and ran like a well oiled machine. We had shot 60 students work at around 2:30pm with only the last 5 to shoot tomorrow at 2pm which shouldn't take too long.

After the shoot was finished we returned to our studio to review all of the scans files I received and also the shots from Ian's table shoot (receiving Aidan's batch on Friday afternoon ready for our weekend of fun).

Ians shoot alone provided us with around 400 photos of work as well as the 200 odd scans I collected (Aidan has about this combined from his shoot!) Because of the seer volume of photos we had to be pretty ruthless when reviewing them in our initial selection. We have narrowed the selection down considerably, keeping 2-3 shots of each persons scanned work and 2-3 shots from Ians shoot. Giving us plenty of scope for variation in our layouts / DPS / Chapters. From the 400 photos from Ian's shoot we've got around 180 remaining. 

Student Markers:

 All images nicely filed away: 

Sample shots from Ian's shoot:

It feels great to finally get the shots in the can - the final part of the puzzle. Ian, Charlotte and I will be spending the weekend working on the spreads in our studio (Ian's kitchen table + three Macs) to ensure the proof of the book is ready for next week. Whoop!