The Utility of Shadows

I have visited hundreds of factories over the years and most of the successful ones end up bursting at the seams as they try and cope with increasing productivity in a fixed space. Good for business but usually bad for photography. Graphics Works in Milton Keynes was no exception, but Fujifilm wanted a double page image for their magazine, featuring MD Peter Barham with as many of the four large format Acuity printers that he'd bought from them, as possible. After a few minutes of trying various angles, it was obvious that only one was going to work and that I would have to settle for three out of four but as the initial test shot shows, it was still a mess and although some local tidying up was possible, none of the hardware was movable. So this was a perfect job for a technique I've used many times where essentially, I light what I want to see and let everything else disappear into the shadows. I started with my first light on Peter and from there it was just a question of positioning the other lights, hiding them wherever possible, controlling the quality, amount and direction of each one and building the image up, step by step.......plus a little polishing in Photoshop.