SIMON MURRELL PHOTOGRAPHY
Simon Murrell is a multi-award-winning photographer, with over 30 years of experience in all facets of photography and video production. He has tutorial experience with postgraduates and one-on-one training with famous artists. His expertise ranges from animal photography to drinks photography, such as working with Bonhams and other well-established auctioneers.
Simon also has many years of experience working with interior, and exterior photography, locations, people, portraits, headshots, products, stills, and PR and events, including very high-profile people such as Celebrities, Politicians, and even Royalty. Simon has multiple accolades commending his still life and video production for worldwide Blue Chip Companies companies such as BBC, high street Banks and the largest retailers in the world.
However, Simon remains grounded and possesses a very helpful relaxed, and humble approach toward his wealth of knowledge and experience in dealing with people from all walks of society. Simon is very easygoing and experienced in all genres of photography and would produce images, videos, and ideas well beyond your expectations at reasonable prices.
About our Photography Services
Animal
Some years ago, I teamed up with an animal handler, and after shooting a couple of animal photography commercial jobs together. Then we started doing animal photography for photo libraries, from his extensive collection of reptiles and amphibians plus contacts that he had for more exotic animals. We also were commissioned top photograph animals for commercial and editorial projects, working with pet food manufacturers, the RSPCA, plus large advertising agencies across Europe and the Middle East
Drinks
I had always been interested in drinks photography, in fact, one of my very first jobs was for Haig Whisky. Being a drinks photographer, I think it was due to the challenges of lighting the product, although drinks bottles have always been very attractive, as a lot of money was spent on the design and production of the packaging.
I have been commissioned, by most of the UK’s major drinks companies, who own most of the brands. I have also worked for a major publisher, shooting drinks photography for several books on the various types of alcoholic spirits.
Exteriors
I have been involved in large projects for prestige sign companies, who produce signage for large national brands, hotel exteriors, street scenes for national house builders, and exterior photography shots for bespoke glass manufacturers and installers.
Headshots
I do literally thousands of headshots each year, this sector has grown hugely since COVID-19 and with many companies with staff still working from home, it’s very important to put a face to a voice so headshot photography is important. I always visit the client, with backgrounds and lighting, and generally, it takes around five minutes per person, all the selected headshots are retouched to even out skin tones and imperfections.
Interiors
I have extensive experience in interior photography and photographed a lot of various interiors ranging from restaurant interiors for Zizi and Rosa’s Thai, pub interiors, for various brewery chains, hotel interiors, and many more. I also work for several Interior designers, architects, stone worktop manufacturers, and glass companies.
Locations and Studio Set
I really enjoy different locations and studio set photography. Over the years, I have built and photographed studio sets for many clients, even building the corners of houses in the studio, to promote the guttering and downpipe, room sets for furniture and flooring, although sometimes it was more economical to find a suitable location for the shot.
People
This has always been quite a large sector of my work, quite often I am booked to do people photography, but they also want natural-looking pictures of people going about their natural daily routine, for example office type shots, maybe in a meeting scenario, or on the phone, greeting a client. These sorts of shots are great for a company’s corporate website.
Portraits
I have a small studio, which is perfectly adequate for portrait photography, or I am happy to visit the client, I always take a selection of backgrounds and plenty of lighting, I would always advise the client to select a few portrait images online, as examples of the sort of images they like, and we can work together to achieve the portrait image they are happy with.
Products
I have a small product photography studio, which is ideal for tabletop products, you can either send them to me with a brief, and I will do a sample shot for approval, if everything is OK I will do the rest. Of course, you can attend and direct the shoot as well, I do have a couple of clients that have a lot of products to shoot every month, so they just send them to me, I shoot and retouch them, and invoice them monthly just for the time it takes me, at a very favourable rate for them
PR and Events
I often get called to cover PR and events photography shoots, in many ways, these are the same thing, for example I cover a lot of new store openings for big national retailers, and they will usually organise an event for the occasion, and maybe invite a local dignitary along to cut the ribbon, usually they will want to get something out in the press urgently, so I always have a laptop with me to download the images, so they are ready for distribution as soon as possible.
Still Life
When I first started getting work in the industry, it was for still life photography, which is an excellent discipline to start with, as the lighting and composition have to be perfect, the same lighting skills that you learn for still life photography can equally be applied to every other branch of photography
Video Production
Since the introduction of DSLRs, it allowed me to shoot high-quality video production, and it has enabled still life photographers like myself to get involved in video, for some companies I do regular newsletter videos, but am happy to look at any potential project
The History of Photography
The Basic Principles
Photography as we know it today is a relatively recent development, although the basic principle of photography was discovered in the 5th century BC when the forerunner of the Camera Obscura was observed, it was basically a darkened room with a small hole in one wall that projected an image of the outside onto the opposite wall, this developed through the centuries and eventually crude lenses were used to intensify the image.
The Discovery of Light Sensitivity Materials
It wasn’t until the 18th and 19th centuries that light-sensitive coating started to be developed to make these images more permanent, using glass plates coated with light-sensitive chemicals, and in the mid-1880s a flexible roll film was developed by George Eastman.
All of these early images were various shades of black and white, until the development of Autochrome in 1907 which produced early colour images. It’s a sobering thought given how popular Black and White photography is today, that if colour photography had been invented first we would have probably never had black and white photography.
Development of Colour
The next major step forward was the introduction of the Kodachrome in 1935 which revolutionised 35mm photography using a very complicated development process consisting of 4 development stages and took several hours in total, for this reason, it had to be returned to a Kodak Laboratory for processing, although after a lawsuit in the 1950’s independent labs started processing Kodachrome in the USA. It was used both in stills photography and the film industry available in 35mm format, and was only discontinued in 2002.
The Commerical Market
When I started in Professional photography in early 1980 very little had changed for some time, and very little changed in the next 20 years most studio still life photography was shot on either 5 x 4 or 10 x 8 plate cameras which used darkslides loaded with either 10 x 8 or 5 x 4 sheet film (the numbers denote the size of the film in inches) some photographers used either half plate or 5 x 7 film, but it was never that popular.
A Typical Commercial Studio
A lot of time was spent setting up and lighting a still life shot in the studio, and Polaroid film was used to check the progress. Kodachrome was never available in larger formats in the UK and Kodak produced a new transparency film called Ektachrome, which was available in all formats. This was a much simpler process and progressed from E3 to E4 and finally to E6 which is still available today, its main advantage was that it could be processed in around 45 minutes by the many
independent labs in London.
The Advent of Digital
The first digital photographic equipment that arrived on the scene in the early 1990’s made by Scitex, was a digital back that could be adapted to fit medium format cameras, mainly from Hasselblad and Mamiya. It captured the image in three separate exposures through Red, Green, and Blue coloured filters on a motorised wheel onto a 4-megapixel chip, the software then turned these 3 monochrome images into colour. The early adopters were the large catalogue studios, who despite the cost of the equipment made huge savings on film and processing
Today
Today digital continues to evolve with cameras getting more sophisticated, and ever bigger chips, although film still has a following, it is not very common in the professional sector.
