Back in May I got a call from Will Cornwallis who runs Freestretch Marquees. Will and his team were coming down to London from North Herefordshire to put up their stretch marquees for the Singleton Whisky Night Market, organised by Story PR, and he wanted me to shoot some new images of the marquees in use for the Freestretch website.
After a chat about how he envisaged using the images we settled on a natural style for shots of the team for the About Us page, their logo on the tents in the background behind ‘stuff happening’, and a series before and during the event capturing the atmosphere and colour to illustrate a Case Study page and sprinkle through the website.
I arrived on London’s South Bank just in front of ITV Studios around five on a gloriously sunny Spring evening to catch the team putting finishing touches to their marquees while other suppliers set up lighting (First Light), pork roasts (Forza Win), cocktail lessons (Andrea Montague), a guide to whisky (Thinking Drinkers), and plenty more. We got the guys together for a group portrait and then his Marketing Man was keen to get some of Will alone. But as Will half-whispered to me in an aside, he really isn’t the ‘limelight’ kind of guy and hates posing so we made them much less formal by having the other three stand behind me and put him off to get some natural laughs, then got a more ‘environmental’ shot during some last-minute guy rope adjustments. More interesting than the typical down-the-lens portrait, and much better suited to the friendly, hands-on nature of the man and the company.
I had a real blast on this job. The event itself was great fun to mingle through and photograph but I particularly enjoyed meeting the Freestretch guys and if you’re looking for stretch marquees I can genuinely recommend them. Will’s got buckets of positive energy and talking to him I definitely got the feeling his country home and outdoors lifestyle had a lot to do with it. It really made me start longing to escape from London life! One day…
You can find out more about my event photography here.
