Marks & Spencer Newcastle - Retail Shoot

So, I do love having my diary all planned out and figured out what I’ve got in the coming week, so I can plan out shoots and do a bit of planning to really get the best out of each of the shoots. But then, now and again, these curveball shoots come in at the last minute, ‘Oh, what are you doing on Wednesday?’ kind of shoots. And I like them as well, because obviously they’re really useful just to get your head into something a bit more spontaneous. 

This was one that came in from an agency down in London and it ended up being for M&S in Newcastle, which is great. I’ve not worked directly for M&S before, so it was great to be working with their revamp team. They’re revamping the whole of the Newcastle store. Apparently it’s taken months! And it was great to be part of the kind of buzz and flow. There were two photographers, there was myself and there was Simon down from Leeds, because he’s done quite a few of these before. Very much my first time, so I was very much going with the flow and being led by the staff team on what they needed specifically for their internal and external perspectives. 

It was a whirlwind and it was also ridiculously early in the morning and poor Karl, I don’t think he’s ever seen 5.20 on a morning before. I think he might have stayed up all night to make sure he was up in time! But yeah, we were in the middle of Northumberland Street at about 5.45 a.m., ready to rock and roll. And it was a good job we were, the store was opening at eight o’clock, so we had to be all ready and everything done by then and it was quite a whirlwind of images to get done. Edit on the same day, everything done by 12 o’clock, so it was a very quick turnaround. But it was great. It was good to be part of and fingers crossed it’s the start of a few projects with them. They’re doing refurbs on quite a few stores up in the North East at the moment, so it’d be nice to be part of that going forward.