Welshpool Church in Wales Primary School

So, a photographic fund-raising event for Welshpool Church in Wales Primary School eh, can we do this – why not!

Laura got in contact to see if I would be interested in a fund-raising event for the Friends of Welshpool Church in Wales Primary school to help with various projects such as fencing around a Forest School area, outdoor seating and shading for the Multi Use Games Area etc.

After a few email exchanges we set out an achievable goal and Laura got busy with arranging and advertising the event while I got busy with sorting out forms and shooting arrangement.

It was going to be a long day, 22 families in total that would require a range of shoots to make a photography pack interesting for each family.

A themed Christmas backdrop was added to G17’s stock of backgrounds for this occasion… but I needed an assistant – who could I ask, my beautiful wife of course - Sue volunteered to help with the paper work for the day so on post production, I would know which family was in what shoot and had a method to communicate with those families to get the photo packs to them – brill.

On the day of the shoot, with everything packed up and van idling for a few minutes to clear off the
-6 degree frost, we head over to Welshpool school.

We are met by Laura and her daughter Amelia, Laura has offered Amelia’s services to assist in whatever we need, be it bringing coffee, setting up etc - just ask.
Laura also produces a set list of families and the shoot times, along with names and contact details – perfect.

Sue and Amelia help with the setting up, backgrounds, lights and while we are talking Amelia says her dad is really into photography and so is she, so I ask if Amelia would help me work out the studio light exposure for the models and background, I also find out that Amelia knows me through Sally Gartell Dance Academy – she is a student there and I have photographed her before – I had no idea!

With the lights setup Amelia sits in and poses for the camera holding a light meter under her chin so I can get the right balance of light on the pose and on the background - photographically, we are set to go.

While we are shooting Amelia comes across a friend she has not seen for ages, for the individual portrait shoot I ask Amelia if she would photograph her friend for me so I can stand back and look at the set, this had a few benefits, I can make sure the set looks the best it can with the families being photographed, Amelia gets to learn a little studio photography and our model poses naturally for her friend, this also helps set the template for the rest of the shoot and allows us to accomplish a photographic flow with each family, props and poses.

They say never photograph children and animals but with the help of Amelia and Sue plus the use of some funny looking props, we managed to get even the most tearful toddlers to smile, in fact, so much so it had the photography crew in tears of laughter.

We finally wrap up, it has been a long day, 8am – 4.30pm and I ache and so too does Sue due to helping families with different poses.

I could not have done it without Sue who maintained an air of order over the day and helped tremendously with getting the right people in the right place – and of course Amelia who helped extract those cheeky looking smiles from our family photo shoot – great team work!