Nuneaton

121 and Group Photography Workshops

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121 and Group Photography Workshops for 2023

Learn more about photography for beginners and intermediate practitioners.

Come and join me and a group of likeminded people to learn more about photography.

I’ve got three group workshops currently available and spaces for 121 coaching.

On my workshops, I’ll get you using manual mode and will hand over complete creative control to you, teaching you how to set up your camera and use it in a simplified way that places the image as the challenge.
I’ll even teach you the basics of composition, exposure and post production.

Street Photography

Urban Landscape Photography

Rural Landscape Photography

I can teach you street photography and Landscapes - Urban and Rural with a documentary led style that is perfect for travel and hobbyist photography.

Check out the below workshops for more information and for booking.

Spaces are always limited to four per course.

These are the available 3 courses for now.

For more workshops, please subscribe to my emails for news of new courses as they’re released.

Photography Service For The Self Employed

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Photographic Content Creation.

A service that gives you regular photographic content for your social media.

It’s commonly known that to maintain a strong image on social media, you need to continually update your social pages with attractive visual content and strong supportive text.

Karen Webb @ KJ Interiors

  • A picture is worth more than a thousand words

  • Research proves that to get good engagement on social media, you must use good photography.

  • Photography offers an 87% engagement rate on social media.

KJ Interiors, Hinckley

Karen at KJ Interiors in Hinckley is the first to book me for this new service and it’s going really well.

The service consists of one visit each month to create bespoke visual content for the business owner to use on social media and their website.

It’s a straight forward subscription service that delivers professional photography at a price that is extremely affordable for any self employed business owner.

£150 per month.

For that, you get 10 professional photographs every month, designed to target specific audiences and for particular reasons.

You also get inclusive marketing on Hinckley Photographed.

This service is only available to the self employed and businesses with fewer than 5 employees.

The Bulls Head, Leicester Forest West

The Bulls Head Leicester Forest West

The Bulls Head Leicester Forest West

Take a look at what some of my customers have said about my services…

“Paul is a highly skilled professional photographer for all types of stills or video, and we can recommend him.”

Steve Wegerif, Hinckley BID

The Bulls Head, Leicester Forest West

“I worked with Paul on a recent commission and was impressed by his enthusiasm and attention to detail. He took time to understand exactly what we needed and delivered some fantastic quality photography and video for us to use in our marketing. He made everyone feel relaxed and comfortable on the shoot and has great customer service and follow-up.”

Kate Addison, Diabetes UK

I’ve discovered that small businesses need to boost their social media more than ever because they’re 100% reliant on themselves to generate their own work and social media is a solid route to your customers.

The best thing to do is get in touch and we can share ideas.

Sam And Dan Get Lost - Comedy Film - Behind the Scenes

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Comedy Feature Film - Behind The Scenes

Sam and Dan Get Lost (played by Robert Lane and Richard Baldwin), formerly Blokes, is nearing the completion of filming the penultimate scenes.

Director - Lee Price

Asst. Director - Cameron Savage

Asst. Director / Lighting / Locations / Media - Paul Hands

Sound - Stuart Tizick

Plus supporting crew.

This blog is about keeping people up to date with our progress during the recording of our comedy feature film. Filming has stopped.

Kind of….

Filming has only really been postponed because of British summer time, the light isn’t fading until 10:30pm and everyone involved is making this film around their current work commitments. Some of our shoots can often go on in to the small hours and it’s difficult to maintain when you have to be up to go to a job in the morning.

We’re aiming at restarting filming again in the Autumn, after the nights begin to draw in again. The whole film is set at night time, one night in the lives of these two guys that have both suffered at the hands of the women in their lives. They collide in an unexpected way and form a comedic friendship whilst on their adventures (getting lost).

The unlikely duo played by Robert and Richard both come from a creative background, belong to an improvisational comedy group called the Improlectuals and have featured at the Leicester Comedy Festival.

Have a look through this set of behind the scenes stills and look out for my next blog.

Don’t forget to keep up to date with our filmmaking, you can subscribe to my blog for news by email.

Feeling the need to check out my photography?

Click here to view my projects.

Sam And Dan Get Lost - Comedy Feature Film

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Sam And Dan Get Lost

A comedy feature film, 95% made in Hinckley, Leicestershire and 5% Nuneaton, Warwickshire!

Formerly Blokes. Film Director Lee Price has changed the title of the film that our small and creative team have been working on since the start of 2019.

Sam and Dan played by improv comedy actors Robert Lane and Richard Baldwin

As a creative team, we’ve almost completed the recording of our new feature film that has been filmed purely around Hinckley and some small parts in Nuneaton, in the middle of England in Leicestershire and Warwickshire.

Director Lee Price gives us information in good faith that we’re about 10% away from completion and then everything that has been recorded has to be put together in post production before we can look at distribution and the possibility of putting a big show on locally for anyone interested in seeing our hard work come together.

I must add that I’ve seen a lot of the footage and it’s really quite funny, I can’t wait to watch the completed version.

Here’s the latest behind the scenes photographs.

You can subscribe to my blog and get these sent directly to your email address.

I don’t write blogs too often, so you won’t be bombarded but I do have some great news coming up soon regarding a 12 month project that I’ve been working on around the English Countryside. I personally think it’s quite exciting because I’ve never worked on a project for this length of time before. So sign up and I’ll let you know when they’re ready to view.

Sublunary - Alien Invasion of Planet Earth

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Fine Art Photography meets Visual Stories

Sublunary - Part 2

As a professional photographer, Father to the most beautiful little toddler in the world and Husband to an equally beautiful Mother; I find it difficult to get out and make personal work.

In 2017, I graduated from University with a High 2:1 in a BA Hons in Photography & Video degree at De Montfort University, where the idea for this project was born.  I began with a long period of time in the library, scouring art books and photographic archives, learning about who, what where, when, why and how specific bodies of work was made.

Surprisingly, I came across some painters and other Fine Art Photographers that worked in similar fields to my research.  One in particular that sticks out in my mind was Photographer Erasmus Schroeter and Painter Max Ernst.

Erasmus Schroeter (2005).

Max Ernst, (N.D.)

I was also heavily inspired by my lecturer (Kosovan) Lala Meredith-Vula who is a contemporary fine art photographer with international recognition.  Lala's ideas about my work and how to get the best out of me was first class and Lala's self confessed crazy mind was a perfect match for the project I had stuck in my head.  She knew just how to get me excited about my own work.

Lala Meredith-Vula

Lala Meredith-Vula

Lala Meredith-Vula (N.D.)

Lala Meredith-Vula (N.D.)

So the body of work for Sublunary began.  I created a series of landscape photographs that followed the narrative of an imaginary alien invasion of the planet Earth.  A tall order you might think?  I just needed the right level of inspiration and a camera.  At the end of creating the work for my degree, I put it all together in a short movie with a spooky sound track that I created myself.  You can watch that below.

I'm now about to embark on a much longer journey that will see me creating a whole new body of work for Sublunary Part 2.  I'll be using my experiences from the first part of the project and will be digging deeper in to my imagination.

Here's a sneaky peek at my first experiment for part 2...

Paul Hands (2018), The Mute.

This is called 'The Mute' and features a landscape photograph that has been manipulated in camera by myself.  I added the red light using the brake lights on my car and chose this location for the crazy tree that could be morphed in to any kind of other worldly creature.  The reverse side of the road sign represents having nothing to say, to be muted and to be stunned by the experience of an alien invasion.  You will see that I've also added a strange shaped metal frame on the right.  This represents an alien being and is the shape of a large humanoid or key hole.  It is hollow and appears invisible with the exception of the outer edges.

The scene is lit like a stage as if the play is being carried out and has undertones of humour, not to be taken seriously.  It's a project that I can literally play and have fun with.  I have a list of locations, that I've been building, so you can watch to see how this develops.

De Montfort University bought the first 5 prints of this project and hold them in their permanent art collection on campus.  You can also read more about this project here.

If you'd like to follow my work then you can subscribe to my emails (below) or follow my social media channels.

Corporate Business Headshots Leicestershire

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Corporate Business Headshots Leicestershire

Recently I've been working with The Stuart Fletcher & Barrett Group at their head office in Nuneaton, Warwickshire.  They hired me to produce 60 corporate business head shots for their new website.  I managed this in 2 days of location shooting on site with a quality mobile photography studio.

The SFB Group are a nationwide accountancy and consultancy.  They wanted a professional image for every single member of staff.  So I took my time and fussed over the details.

We used a grey back drop, a fixed light shooting through an umbrella to soften the harshness of the permanent key light.  Then I set up a Bowens lamp shooting through a Snoot and pointing it on to the back drop behind the heads of each staff member.  This was by design and also to cover up a wrinkly backdrop!

This style produces a brilliant effect that allows the characters to really stand out from the background and gives each person a unique portrait.

Would you like to see some of the results?

Was that a silly question?

You can click on each picture to enlarge them and inspect the quality easier.

The SFB Group were so pleased with the work that I did for them, that they wrote to me with a review and even placed it on Google so it forms part of my SEO.  

“We used the photographic services of Paul Hands for our Corporate Staff Photographs. We required photos for our new website. Paul was recruited as a last minute booking and he could not have been more accommodating. His attention to detail was a comfort as a client and we received great customer service. On the two days of shooting he was very professional and brought out the smile in every member of staff in his own unique way (a lego car and a gingerbread man helped with this too but I won’t let any further details slip and ruin his secrets to getting you smiling). We had the photographs returned to us within a matter of days and Paul had put each set of photo’s into individual files, per staff member, for ease of reference for us. These little bits of attention to detail really make the difference. The quality of the photographs were crisp and clear and were exactly what we were looking for. We would thoroughly recommend Paul’s services to anybody looking for a photographer, he is fantastic!”
— Rosie Iliffe, The Stuart, Fletcher and Barrett Group

To discuss corporate business headshots and portraiture with me, please click on this link to contact me.

UBL 17 Fight Photographs from The Athena

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Welcome to the home of the boxing photographs from UBL 17 at The Athena in Leicester.

This page on my website has been specifically dedicated to the huge collection of photographs, from the unlicensed fighting that goes on between some of the hardest men in Britain.

To view the pictures, simply click on the photograph, then choose the fight collection that you wish to look through.  You will even have the option to buy and have a bespoke book designed for you as well prints and a dvd slideshow with music.  You can do this directly through my website.  Payments are secured and guaranteed through Stripe.

 

Professional Photographer Leicester, Leicestershire, Hinckley, Nuneaton, Coventry, Birmingham, Warwickshire, Midlands, England, UK, United Kingdom, Great Britain.

Commercial, Business, PR, Public Relations, Landscape, Street Photography and Documentary photographer available for commissions.

Marco Pierre White, Hinckley Island Hotel, Jury's Inn PR Photography

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It was a pleasure to be commissioned for a commercial public relations photography shoot for Marco Pierre White and his visit to one of his prestigious restaurants based at Jury's Inn, Hinckley Island Hotel. 

If you're conversant with Whites personality, you'll understand that the shoot didn't go to plan and I worked with the staff from Black and White promotions (one of Whites companies) to get the best photography from the evenings dining and book signing event.  After showing the list of required photographs to the people running the event, they said to forget some of the photos because Marco does what Marco wants!

Knowing that's how he works, I worked him to the best photographic advantage.  As a professional public relations photographer, I knew to make the best of all situations that arose that evening and here's a selection of some of the photographs.

 

If you'd like to visit any of the websites for the companies involved with this event, please click on the logos below.

UBL 14, The Athena, Leicester, Boxing Photography teaser

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While I'm working hard on editing, there's so many good photos that are gonna take me a week to work on.  I've managed to get through a few this evening.  Here's a few teasers from the first batch of post production and hang fire while I work on  some assignments for my commercial photography business.

Click on each image to enlarge.

Advertise your business with click through links directly to your website on one of the UBL 14 Boxing photographic posts.

Click to request a quote.

Commercial Photography and Wedding & Portrait Photography

A Camera Doesn't Take Photographs.

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Tomorrow, I start my new venture in tutoring hobbyist photographers, by providing a workshop that will help them to understand their cameras' much better but more importantly, how to make a good photograph.  

Firstly, a camera doesn't make a good photograph anymore than a typewriter wrote a good novel.  It's all about the person holding the camera and what is in their hearts.

There's a scientific formula for creating a strong photograph but those that already know how to make one, can spot these scientific creations a mile off.  Anyone can use the magic rule of thirds with leading lines through the photograph as it dodges repetitive features etc.  Landscape photography is probably the easiest genre of photography to start with.  The landscape rarely moves in front of you.

In my workshops, I'm going to teach people how to see properly.  What makes a good photograph and how to turn the simplest of things in to something so majestic looking (if that's your cup of tea).  Some photographs work well when they don't look majestic and look dilapidated.  It really does depend on what the World says to you.  How do you view our amazing planet and the creatures that inhabit it?

As this is my new venture, I'll be considering running additional workshops in the future. Tomorrow's will be ran from The Clock Tower Tea Room by the waters edge in Hartshill.  All of the photographs in this blog post was created in the location of the workshops.

Click on each photograph to enlarge.