Commercial

Tesco Ireland

Yorkshire Portrait Photographer Sarah Mason Photography

At the end of May, an exciting email pinged into my inbox, subject - Tesco Ireland. Creative agency Rothco asked us if we'd be interested in working with them on a new print campaign for the supermarket. The emphasis was on those real moments in everyday family life. The love, the connections, the food, even the mundane. The campaign, called Family Makes Us Better, would focus on real families in Ireland and look at what 'family' means to different people. I was excited, as they really liked the way we captured the beauty in the everyday in our family shoots. The mud under fingernails, the cake crumbs around little mouths, tangled hair from the wind.

After we heard we'd be shooting the campaign, things moved quickly! All of a sudden we were on board the Jonathan Swift ferry, blue sea, blue sky, and leaving Holyhead behind. We settled ourselves in Dublin for a few days before the shoot began. We'd both been before, but hadn't fully appreciated what a beautiful city it is.

And then we started our 5 day road-trip around Ireland, meeting lovely families along the way, making new friends, great conversations, and the food, the food!! On our travels, we also experienced the full range of Irish weather.

Here are just a small selection of the photos we took, these are the ones that have been released so far.

Yorkshire Portrait Photographer Sarah Mason Photography
Yorkshire Portrait Photographer Sarah Mason Photography
Yorkshire Portrait Photographer Sarah Mason Photography
Yorkshire Portrait Photographer Sarah Mason Photography
Yorkshire Portrait Photographer Sarah Mason Photography
Yorkshire Portrait Photographer Sarah Mason Photography
SarahMasonPhotography_045.jpgYorkshire Portrait Photographer Sarah Mason Photography
Yorkshire Portrait Photographer Sarah Mason Photography
Yorkshire Portrait Photographer Sarah Mason Photography

The agency sent over a few shots of the photos in situ on billboards, buses and in store. It brought it all to life when we saw these for the first time.

Yorkshire Portrait Photographer Sarah Mason Photography
Yorkshire Portrait Photographer Sarah Mason Photography
Yorkshire Portrait Photographer Sarah Mason Photography
Yorkshire Portrait Photographer Sarah Mason Photography
Yorkshire Portrait Photographer Sarah Mason Photography

It was so good to just be ourselves, and shoot in the style we do. We were curious how the agency had found out about us in the first place, and a couple of weeks ago, I found out how. A lovely photographer called Claire from Unscripted Photography had been approached. She couldn't do the dates, and from following my Instagram account, she recommended us. The power of social media in full force right there. We are so grateful to Claire, and hopefully we are going to meet her in person in the not too distant future to giver her a great big hug!

If you'd like to see the wonderful advert that is running in conjunction with the print campaign, you can see it here....

A couple of our friends have spotted the posters on recent trips to Ireland and sent photos to us. Hopefully, in the not too distant future, we'll be going back over to see the campaign with our own eyes. Always nice to have an excuse to travel to Ireland!

The Unthanks - Diversions Volume 4.

Back in December last year, I travelled up to the beautiful village in Northumberland where The Unthanks have their recording studio. They'd asked me to take some publicity shots to announce their new Diversions Album to be released early 2017. The album was going to be a reworking of some of Molly Drake's beautiful songs and poems. Being a fan of her son Nick Drake's work, I had heard some work by Molly, and it seemed to be the perfect fit for The Unthanks to weave their unique sound amongst those tunes and words.

The concept behind the shots was that Rachel and Becky were to join an existing photograph of Molly in a composite, and to make the sisters look ghostly. So I took a series of shots of both Rachel and Becky individually against a plain background. I freelensed a few to give the images that dreamy, ethereal feel.

The Unthanks
The Unthanks

It was a beautiful winter's day outside, so we went down the lane and took a couple more, making good use of that low light!

The Unthanks

I worked on a few edits back in the office and brought Becky & Rachel together just to see what the final choices would look like.

The Unthanks

The final composite was put together by Steven Wainwright. It was great to see it for the first time!

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It's a stunning album. I tried to explain Molly's music in words and then I found this description from Adrian (the pianist, musical director, and producer) and it's just perfect -  'Stylistically, the first thing you hear is the mannerisms of the time. The Noel Coward, Ivor Novello-esque hallmarks of the era are there in her piano playing, and a stiff, properness in the voice. But then, in stunning contrast and contradiction, her softness, her emotional intelligence, her sensual and radiant artistry, start to reach out to you. Hearing a woman, a mother, from that time, expressing her personal, melancholic, philosophical thoughts, so beautifully, with such guile and confidence, and yet kind of from behind closed doors, is as compelling a listen as I’ve ever experienced'. 

The publicity shot I worked on is on the inside sleeve of the album, and the cover of the Extras.

The Unthanks
The Unthanks
The Unthanks

 

If you'd like to here one of the songs, take a listen to this beautiful track. It pulls me in each time I listen to it. The spoken words are by Molly's daughter Nick's sister, Gabrielle.

Charlotte's Garden - by Hannah Nunn

Our dear friend Hannah Nunn has created a beautiful new design for the Brontë Society called Charlotte's Garden which is inspired by the plants in the Parsonage garden around the time of Charlotte Brontë's birthday. The Parsonage have made Hannah's beautiful design into aprons, tea towels, tote bags and other wonderful products to sell in the shop. When we were asked by them to take some lifestyle photographs of the Charlotte's Garden range, we jumped at the chance. We knew the kitchen and garden of our friend Sarah of Simply by Arrangement would be just the perfect place for the shoot, so we arranged a date and headed there one morning hoping for nice light.  

We weren't disappointed - the light that day was just perfect and Sarah was getting excited with all the possibilities. I was also quite giddy as Sarah needed a model and the Charlotte's Garden apron fitted perfectly with my lovely Seasalt dress.  We'd already been out for some groceries to use as props in the tote bag, and fortunately there were plenty of beautiful flowers around that we were also able to incorporate. Molly the dog also helped out with some of the modelling - she's much better at sitting still and doing as she's told than me! Although her powers of restraint were tested when she spotted the French stick sitting in the tote bag! 

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