On Location – Hunt & Palmer Photoshoot

At the tail end of 2011, I was contacted by Jonathan Nicol – Director at Other Finger Films. These guys make stunning short films for a wide range of corporate clients. Creative agency TDG Integrated had asked Jonathan to enlist a photographer to accompany him on a film shoot for air charter giants Hunt & Palmer. As a self-confessed plane nerd, I jumped at the chance!

Hunt & Palmer were undergoing a slight brand refresh coupled with an overhaul of their promotional materials including their corporate website. My role was to provide the photography to appear throughout these mediums.

The photoshoot took place at Farnborough Airport in Hampshire. More specifically, in a huge hangar filled with £20 million+ private jets. One wealthy businessman had his brand new Learjet parked up being serviced. Apparently it had been sat there for almost a year and never been flown. The cost? A cool £28 million. Unbelievable. Anyway, I digress…

My brief was simple. Capture the essence of a high-quality, bespoke air charter service. But this was by no means a straight-forward shoot. The legal and confidentiality restrictions meant that I couldn’t photograph any aircraft which did not belong to Hunt & Palmer. I couldn’t photography anything identifiable as Farnborough Airport due to copyright restrictions. I couldn’t venture outside the hangar due to health and safety.

The video direction and filming would take the best part of 8 hours to complete. Could I really drag out my role for that long? I got to work capturing a host of shots including detail and wider composed shots of the hanger, aircraft, passengers, pilots, terminal building and the airfield.

It’s surprising how creative you get when you’ve got such restrictions laid upon you. If fact I ended up taking shots which clearly breached the legalities imposed upon me, but decided to leave it to TDG Integrated to decide which shots to use and which to bin. There were particular shots I wanted to capture and didn’t want any red tape ruining a photo which might end up passing through the legalities.

By the end of the shoot, I’d taken around 150 photos. A tiny amount for a full day of shooting. However, I was more than pleased with the results. I was under a lot of pressure to impress all three clients – Hunt & Palmer, TGD Integrated and of course Jonathan Nicol from Other Finger Films who had recommended me. The feedback I received on my photography from all three parties was great and I hope to work with any of them again at some point.

It’s a proud feeling when you see your work published on another corporation’s website and promotional materials.

Here is the final film created by Other Finger Films

Author – Oliver Pohlmann

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Head over to the Hunt & Palmer website to see our photography in place