Tony Cobley Lecture

About Tony:

Tony is a professional photographer based in Ivy bridge. He studied at Plymouth College of Art and then qualified to associate ship level of the British Institute of Professional Photography. During his time at the College of Art he started his business using the module PCAD100.

His Commercial work:

Tony’s commercial work includes:

·         Corporate & advertising: He covers a huge range from food and drink to health and well-being.

·         Portrait photography: He said he keeps it simple using a white background with two lights with soft boxes behind. If the client requests an environmental portrait then the equipment will be taken to the location, and the background is then considered carefully. For example he photographs for the charity Devon Air Ambulance so he captured an image of three paramedics walking towards him with the red helicopter in the background. He explained how the location he was on actually had a road running behind it, but the way in which he positioned himself allowed him to avoid showing that in the image.

·         Property & architectural photography: Tony takes images for estate agencies in which the properties are in the range of around the million plus mark. For these locations he needs a lot of light and the lighting set up often takes a couple of hours.

·         Photography for health care, education & leisure: He photographs Maynard Private School in a contemporary style for their new prospectus. The school wanted photographs that promoted the school as a fun learning environment. The photograph which best captured this feel was of a group of children running towards the camera. Tony explained how ‘fly on the wall’ wasn’t really working for what he needed to capture. So he got the children to run at the camera whilst he lay on the grass, tilting his camera towards them. He told them to ‘rawr’ like lions and this in turn gave faces that looked the children were having an excellent time.

·         Domestic wedding and portrait photography

·         Stock & commissioned West Country landscape images: Landscape imagery was where Tony first started out. During our lecture he explained that Landscape photography is quite a hard industry to work solely at as there is not a huge market for it, however this doesn’t stop him doing it alongside his other work.

·         Photography workshop courses and camera tuition

·         Visiting lecturer: He came to the college to talk about his work and his stages of reaching where he is at today.

As Tony doesn’t have his own studio he visits the location in which the client is based and takes the ‘studio’ to them, such as lights, soft boxes etc.

Positives in going to location: the atmosphere of the shoot is easier to create as he is already at the location, the client is more confident if being photographed because they are in a familiar location, being on location the props needed for the shoot are nearly always there, this means Tony is less likely to have to employ someone to create the props.

Negatives in not having a studio: if people ask for studio based work Tony cannot provide this so has to recommend other photographers to take his work.

Advertising: Tony recommends social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter to get work noticed. He did say to make sure you keep your personal and professional pages separate as no client wants to see pictures from your night out at the weekend.

Overall: I found the lecture by Tony Cobley very helpful, as he was a student himself at the college it made the lecture feel very personal as we could all put ourselves in his shoes. He also gave us his brochure and a business card which made me think about designing a card for myself.