I received an email late on May Day Bank Holiday, enquiring about my availability for a two-day commission towards the end of the month.
At first, I did wonder who was working so late on a Bank holiday (apart from me!) After a little research, I found that the enquirer was a communications and advertising agency based in the United States (Waldinger Creative) – This explained the lateness of the hour and the fact that they were working a Bank Holiday!
We established that I did have availability in the requested time-frame and I sought further information. I confirmed that I could meet the requirements of the brief, but suggested that we amend the dates, due to their preferred dates being the late Bank Holiday in May. (Even basic local UK knowledge proved useful in this case and saved a wasted journey to the factory location.)
The end client was FMC – a global chemical company, with three divisions: Agricultural Solutions, Health and Nutrition, and Minerals. They are a huge corporation, employing over 5,500 staff worldwide and has a revenue of US$3.8bn. The images were to be used in their annual “Sustainability Report” – extracts of which are pictured in this post.
It was important that the images taken by me in the UK matched the style/aesthetics of other images from different countries, taken by other photographers. (Note: Not all of the images in the report layout are mine – only the ones taken in the UK.)
The creative director of the project flew over from the States on a Sunday evening, arriving at Heathrow on the Monday morning. He then drove up to the first location at Bromborough, where we met to carry out the first part of the shoot. This was a portrait of the Global EHS Operations Manager. I set up a “pop-up” studio in the staff restaurant and completed the shoot in about half-an-hour. We then toured the factory site, photographing various locations and processes.
Immediately after completing the first day’s shoot we “car-shared” up to Girvan in Ayr, Scotland. This is where the second day’s shoot was to take place. As we drove through the Lake District, Lopaka (the creative director) was amazed by a fast, low-flying military jet that was in a valley, below the level of the road we were on!
The second day’s shoot was in a similar vein, but the factory was processing seaweed extract, instead of processing Lithium for use in your mobile phone battery. After the shoot in Scotland, Lopaka dropped me off at Glasgow Central station, to catch a train back to Lime Street and he flew back to Heathrow and back home to the States the same day, having spent only one night in the UK.
The images in this post are the report that was produced and you can see the full report here >>> http://fmcsustainability.com/wp-content/flipbook/
and a link to a web page version of the report is here >>> http://fmcsustainability.com/
Some of my images:
http://fmcsustainability.com/empoweringtalent/ – Top Image
http://fmcsustainability.com/growinginnovation/ – Middle Image
http://fmcsustainability.com/mindingourresources/ – Top Image
Also, (for the time being at least!) the image I took of the EHS operations Manager is in a collage of FMC staff at the top of their home page, here >>> http://www.fmc.com/
And, here’s some of my images that were used in the report and elsewhere.
