What to do when you booked a photo shoot and the weather is rubbish?

My answer? I have to deal with it.

Take this as an example. This is the finished shot, from a commercial shoot for Elliott UK of a new petrol station at a brand new Morrisons development in Exeter.

I am not saying that this is the best shot in the world – I am just trying to make a very real point using a real life commercial photography situation, and how I dealt with it.

This was the tonemapped version issued at the time of the shoot.

This is the RAW shot, straight out of camera.

The RAW version reflects the conditions at the time. Well after it had stopped raining that is.

I now have adapted my kit so I can shoot on in the rain. If needed. But no-one really wants shots of lovely new buildings in the rain do they?

I must remind myself to write a post on my top 10 bits of photography kit that were not bought at a camera store of any kind. It will make sense don’t worry.

But it really was that dark, dull and grey. Talk about photographs telling the story of the scene – the RAW image does just that!

So yes the weather was awful. But I could not cancel the shoot.

So I carried on.

All I could do was capture all the information in the scene and figure it out later. Deadlines did not permit cancelling the shoot. That and other commitments. That is one of the issues that you are faced with doing any kind of commercial photography work outdoors in the UK. Industrial photography is often outside, and often by prior arrangment, and often with things arranged to happen/ not happen to allow the shoot. So deferring the shoot is sometimes not an option.

So yes I carried on with the shoot, probably taking more images than I needed to as the light was so poor I had to ensure I could produce the required image set and still get paid. The client is not interested (quite rightly) in my problems – they are paying me to do a job and my job is to do that job and give them the images they want!

So the middle, tone mapped image, was the one I gave to the client. At the time sky replacement was not a possibility, due to the time required, and the fact I would have to do this for all 20 images, and there as not the budget to fund this extra time.

As a commercial industrial photographer I have to draw the line when it comes to editing time, and the cost of editing, as I could end up working hours if not days for nothing,

That is why the brief is so important.

But back to the images. The purpose of this post is to prove that a shoot can go on in bad weather, and that with the right skills and equipment a dull image can be completely transformed.

This is exactly the kind of specialist service provided by professional photographers such as myself.

Please get in touch if you want to know anything more about the photography services I can offer you using the contact form at the page

www.rickmcevoyphotography.co.uk/contact/

Thank you for reading this post, and please call back tomorrow for another photography related post at

www.rickmcevoyphotography.co.uk/blog/