I was recently asked by Ron Jenkins, Director of JAM Designs to do a series of shoots for his client Carpets ONLINE. The shoots were of a new carpet product, Powerbond, which had been laid in several of WA’s top schools.
My first thought was “how do I make Carpet look exciting, or even interesting”, I needn’t have worried. I was accompanied on all of the shoots by Carpets ONLINE Company Business Development Manager, Lynn Marley who was a great help throughout. Our first Challenge was John xxiii rd where the product had been laid in several classrooms, and it looked great, very hard wearing & easy to clean. Lynn stepped in as a model & quickly took up the post of teacher, adding human interest to the background of the shots.
Our second shoot was at Newman College, where the product had been laid in the high traffic student locker area. The Carpet layers had done a brilliant job in using a complex pattern of swirls, joining several colors of the product together. I was inspired to use a slow exposure & so with the help of a couple of children & teachers walking through some of the shots; created a blur of movement to illustrate the “high traffic” concept. With the bright blue lockers, the swirl pattern & wonderful texture of the product we managed to create some very interesting shots.
St Benedict’s in Applecross was our next port of call, where the School’s library had recently been renovated and again the carpet layers had done a fantastically innovative job; inserting numbered & lettered carpet squares randomly throughout the room, making it a fun place for the children to study.
Bannister Creek Primary was our final challenge. Here the product had been used in an open air assembly/undercover area, where on our arrival a group of children were playing Volleyball on a court laid out into the design of the carpet. Mindful of the laws of photographing children we were given permission to shoot the action and I was careful to time the shots so that few of the participants could be identified & during post production skillfully edited out any faces. Again we got some great action shots, punctuated by movement & illustrating the product’s versatility & durability.
