I have been capturing stills and videos of manufacturing and industrial businesses for over 17 years and find photographing the transformation and production of everyday objects fascinating.
I was commissioned by the UK Metal Finishing Group, to capture some new imagery for their business website and brochures. They have several treatment centres across the North West (NiPro being part of the group) and they treat metals through coating, galvanisation, or plating processes.
In our initial conversations and meeting, the marketing representative highlighted their concern about how the areas would look to be photographed.
The chemical nature of the processes is messy and could be seen as dirty from an outsider's perspective.
As experienced industrial photographers, we carefully chose angles to mitigate any views of the floor or areas that had built up chemical deposits.
This is extremely common and nothing to be concerned about, like taking your car to a garage to be fixed, you don't expect the garage floor to be spotless or without oil or grim build-up, this is the same. After thousands of hours using dip and dunk methods, chemical deposits are inevitable.
We lit the scenes using ambient light and used a small amount of off-camera flash to fill and enhance any poorly lit areas.
One of the fascinating elements for me was seeing the bare metals being transformed by either zinc or black plating, the chemical reaction is quite magical as the dull metal products are passed through a series of chemical baths, the transformation isn't obvious until the metals are finally removed from the end bath in a 'smoke and mirrors' reveal to see them gleaming and shiny.
I also loved photographing the sand-blasting process as this environment had a 'Life on Mars' vibe, although my camera kit would be ruined if I was in the blasting container for too long. That sand gets everywhere!
It was an interesting company to photograph with, a somewhat gritty and often smelly process, but the results are remarkable.
Here are some examples of how the company are using the photographs on their website.
If you have a project that I can add value to and you'd like to discuss it, please get in touch via my contact page.