I have known Jo for at least 25 years. She was a training manager for PGL when I was doing their first aid training. All that changed over time, and most recently with "lockdown". Jo has set up her own business "Ocean Aspire" where her core product is "Mental Health First Aid". Our first set was down on the beach at Woolacombe. What a beautiful beach! Jo wanted the the ocean to feature in these shots as its an integral part of her brand.
After this set, we moved out onto the open beach.
Jo's business name, "Ocean Aspire" I think says it all. The idea for these photos, was to be inspirational. Which I like to think we achieved. The beach was quite busy, with people surfing and walking. I got some lovely shots of Jo, but with a surfer sticking out of her head, and people walking their dogs in the background! I like to get the shot right "in camera" rather than photoshop the image later.
After the beach, we went back to Jo's house, for lifestyle shoot. The idea here was to show the lifestyle she has built, and the security of her home, which is necessary for teaching mental health first aid. Her house has a cracking deck, which overlooks the beach, where we got these shots. A seagull of some sort, had left a huge pile of poo, right in the background, which was difficult to exclude from the shot.
The last set of the shoot was in Jo's office. She had this space built not long after she moved to the house, to have a proper "workspace" which has become an essential space in our modern age. This has been emphasised by the pandemic lockdowns and homeworking.
We wanted to get Jo's business logo into these shots. It took some furniture rearraging and climbing onto things to get the shots. We had repeated fits of the giggles doing this, particularly in the office. We did not want too serious looking images, but trying to get these without crying was a challenge.
The shoot took a whole day to complete, plus nearly six hours travelling. I took over 800 photos. Curiously almost every single one was in focus, which made filtering them even more difficult.
The shots that we ended up selecting, we got about 200, had to be "on brand", to portray Jo and her business to the very best advantage. This we acheived, with a lot of hard work.
When we had finished we went to a local bar and had a really nice meal before braving the M5 for the journey home. It turned out the the motorway was shut, so Jo suggested I drove across Exmoor. What a treat
Jo can be found at www.oceanaspire.co.uk
Branding shoots are £900.00, I have a £300.00 discount voucher scheme at the moment. Please email me - martinataxiom@gmail.com for further information!
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