Complete Fire Solutions

Complete fire solutions are based in Pontefract, West Yorkshire, and, have probably saved lots of lives and hundreds of thousands of pounds in fire damage over the years

They install and maintain fire prevention, alarm, warning and fighting equipment for businesses all over the Yorkshire area.

Having a chat with director Richard, we decided to capture each member of staff both in a fairly traditional normal pose and also in a friendly, fun way, so they would have images for different occasions. I think the friendly ones work lots better though 🙂

Setting Up

We needed a decent amount of space for the setup, so used one of the garages. For the white background, I used my largest pop-up reflector stood on a chair.

There were three lights – one to make the background really bright, a key light to the front left and a rim light behind to the right – you can see the little highlight on the right of most of the portraits.

The laptop got a live feed of photos sent to it for review, and also so the rest of the team could watch and offer “encouragement” as photos popped up!

The Shoot Itself

I like to shoot groups of people these days – rather than 1 at a time coming into the room.

It tends to create an air of levity and banter between everyone from the off. Then the person being photographed will probably get some “input” from those watching. Rather than a nervous smile, you usually get some amazing expressions and jokes, all of which add up to photos packed with life, personality and a bit of fun too.

And that’s my job really – to set all this up then to suggest a few things for them to do, then watch and capture as the magic happens.

We started with the office team and they really knocked it out of the park with some fantastic smiles and expressions. Then the team of engineers came in – as expected, they were great fun, too. A couple just wanted it over with ASAP, that’s normal.

Finally, Richard and the other directors gave us some fantastic poses and gestures, especially the “pointing” shots, which I’m sure they will be using for years to come.

The New White Wall Technique

This is a new white wall technique we have been honing in 2022 means we can shoot consistent professional shots in almost any location – we did it in a portacabin by a train track in Oxford this summer to prove it works!

It is really effective for anybody who needs consistent photos of everyone which are professionally retouched and can be used all over the business.

These can be “cut out” and quickly dropped onto any graphic you want – so if you have a Canva user in your team, they’ll love the transparent PNG files we can include.

It also means we can include more than just 1 shot per person – Complete Fire Solutions have LOTS of each person to play with