Accor Hotels is the world’s largest hotel and tourism group. In New Zealand they own a number of major hotel chains including Sofitel, Novotel, Mercure and Ibis.

I was told it’s generally quite difficult to organise headshots for the various managers because their schedules were so busy. Therefore the one-hour conference lunch break presented an opportunity to photograph them while they were all in one place rather than scattered around the country.

I turned up the next day at the Novotel Hotel in Cathedral Square (which, incidentally, is a very nice hotel!) to set up. I was able to use a dedicated boardroom with lots of space and nice plain textured white wallpaper as a built-in background. The subjects would sit far enough forwards of the wall to render the wallpaper texture moot, as it would not be within the range of focus.

I was hugely impressed with the Accor staff and how willing they were to have their photos taken, and the fun they had while doing it. I had a constant line of people waiting, often joking with each other and trying to crack up whoever happened to be in front of the camera.

I photographed 30 people, covering everybody needed a headshot as well as doing a few impromptu group shots. I always take multiple shots for each person and choose the best one in post to make sure everybody gets a good picture.

A lot of other headshot photographers will simply deliver the images straight out of camera or just with a bit of sharpening added, but my standard post-production process includes a lot more subtle tweaking and polishing to get a really professional image, including: adjusting skin tones, localized adjustment of exposure and exposure ratios across the image, hotspot  and ‘shine’ taming, plus tweaks to sharpness, saturation and local contrast enhancement in addition to my standard portraiture techniques of blemish removal, shadow reduction and skin smoothing.

Note that I didn’t light the background as I prefer to allow ‘white’ backgrounds to record as light grey (unless specifically requested otherwise). Pure white backgrounds look extremely clinical and can have a ‘stock’ (i.e. fake) feel. They also become problematic when used on websites with a white background as the whites blend together and the image becomes a floating dismembered head unless the image is given a border.

Here’s a selection of some of images created:

I went there this week to photograph the new cafe. It’s situated in a fantastic heritage building in the centre of town, and I’m sure it’s going to be hugely popular with locals (there was a steady stream of patrons on the Monday morning I was there photographing). In addition to the usual exterior and interior shots I do for Coffee Culture, co-owner Murray asked if I could get some ‘behind the counter’ action shots, as well as some general promo shots of him and some of the staff.

It was great fun and I got some fab images that Coffee Culture will be able to use for all kinds of promtional activities. Here’s a sample of some of my favourites.

This week I shot the interior of the Merivale Coffee Culture, which has just undergone a refurbishment. The place looks fantastic – very light and airy with really nice pistachio green accents.

Here are some of the shots of the interior:

One of my favourite clients is Canterbury-based cafe chain Coffee Culture. I’ve done a number of photography assignments for them over the years, including location photography for a number of their premises, as well as a commission for a large panoranic image of iconic Lyttelton Harbour that hangs in their Lyttelton cafe on London Street.

Earlier this week I went down to Coffee Culture’s newest location in Beckenham, at Colombo & Tennyson Streets. I had a chat to the owner a few days prior and he noted that the place took on a fabulous atmosphere in the evening due to the unique lighting design, and he wanted to capture this ‘cosy’ feeling in the photographs.

He was right – the light fixtures were amazing! It’s a fantastic interior design, and if you’re in the area I suggest you stop in for a coffee and a delicious Denheath custard square.

Here are a few of the final images of the Coffee Culture interior photoshoot: