This week we’re catching up with Graham, who heads up our Studio team in Manchester. We get the 411 on what an average day looks like as the Head of Studio.
My alarm goes off at…
5.45… Optimistically I set it for 5.45 daily… I’m actually pretty good at getting in early.
I start my day by…
Coffee in the car and breakfast from the attic (the in-house café). I usually start the day by planning out my day hour by hour. Every day is different and we’re pretty reactive so my plan can change!
I’m responsible for…
Image quality on all advertising and gallery assets, studio production and the video production team – but in reality there is so much that we do that I don’t see everything!
The best thing about my job is…
Making images – I really enjoy anything that involves location shooting or something a bit more techy on a set including difficult lighting or a decent set build. Basically smaller teams are more fun where we can all get involved in making the shoot happen!
My day in three words…
Review, feedback, repeat…
My fave work memory is…
A pastel story we shot in Lanzarote a few years back – shooting on the edge of the national park. I’d play driver, photographer and general scout – we worked with an awesome team and the images looked unreal!! A real career highlight but there are lots more I could mention!
Advice I’d give to someone getting in this industry
As a photographer – only take good pictures. Anything other than good shouldn’t be acceptable. The higher you push your standards the better you get! It’s also really important to understand what your internal client wants… I always remind myself and my team we are not the customer, and that’s really key! That said – a well crafted concept and image still cuts through the rest in advertising!
An average day goes a lil’ like this…
9am
Coffee, catch up with the team. Meet with our buying Director Debbi and E-commerce manager Angela to review what products are going live that day.
11am
Send feedback to the team – catch up with individual areas if necessary. Usually I check in with our studio manager, and lead creatives on the gallery production side and see if things are running to plan – which is generally not the case! We are dealing with 6 or 7 models daily so it’s to be expected!
1pm
A couple of times a week, when required, I pick up a daily imagery review of anything that’s been shot. It’s really important to quality check our output constantly as we are creating thousands of images weekly. All of our imagery represents the brand, so visual identity is key in all we do!
3pm
We work closely with our facilities team to make sure we always plan what we need in terms of studios in advance. So occasionally we’ll get together – we’re working on a big move to allow our area to be refurbished at the moment.
5pm
Could be inbox catch up or scheduling meetings, a kit review ahead of a creative or anything else that has come up! Generally the day runs away with itself…
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