A couple of months ago Tristan Sharps, of dreamthinkspeak (who created “Before I Sleep” for Brighton Festival back in May) gave me a backstage tour of the Brighton Dome. It was a pretty fascinating peek into the areas you wouldn’t normally see – we even got a bit of a look at the entrance to the much-fabled tunnels which The Prince Regent had built when he was resident at the Royal Pavilion so he could easily get from his palace, to the theatre. I shall continue to keep asking if I can get into those spaces! In the meantime, Tristan introduced me to Rebecca Fidler with a view to me photographing her work with Audioactive.

Audioactive is a not-for profit voluntary community organisation that provides training in the production of contemporary popular music for children and young people. In 2009 they commissioned “Bonfire Night”, which was written by professional poet, Dizraeli. This year the project has been built upon, the cast a crew extended and Brighton Dome and Young Offending Services have got involved. A series of workshops on lyric writing, rapping, acting, music production and art and design were put on and the result is an exciting theatre peice that addresses a number of issues facing young people today, including guns and violence, teenage pregnancy and being a Dad, facing responsibilities, politics and war, media perception of young people, how police deal with young people and more. As a whole, the project has aimed to build confidence and self esteem amongst the people who have taken part in it, although from the series of portraits I took of the cast, you’d never have guessed they lacked confidence! Naturals in front of the camera. They were taken as part of my aim to do one free shoot a month for a charitable organisation or artist based in Brighton – a bit of a break from my architectural photography work!

This is the photography blog of clickclickjim, Jim Stephenson Architectural Photographer. As always, plenty o’ pics on my website.

This is the photography blog of clickclickjim, Jim Stephenson Architectural Photographer. As always, plenty o’ pics on my website.

The vast majority of my work is architectural – photographing architecture and interiors for architects, interior designers, developers, magazines and newspapers. I do, however, undertake quite a bit of corporate work. This might involve doing some staff headshots, product shots, company events and all that kind of stuff. It’s a completely different type of work and, whilst architecture is what I’m passionate about, it is nice to work with people once in a while (buildings aren’t so good for conversation).

To this end, Clare Hall (of Hall Creative Design) got in touch as one of her clients, Clarity Environmental, needed some shots of their staff, offices and their two dogs.

As always, more pics on my website.

I do quite a bit of work for Affinity Sutton and, although I don’t get flown off to glamorous locations all over the world, I really enjoy it because I always get to meet a few people (much better for conversation than even the most beautifully design pieces of architecture!). In fact, for a different few clients, I do quite a bit of staff portraits, community images, launch parties and so on. These images are of the estate maintenance team across two of Affinity Sutton’s estates in Bromley.

This is the photography blog of clickclickjim, Jim Stephenson Architectural Photographer. As always, plenty o’ pics on my website.

A lot of my architectural clients ask me to take portraits of their staff members for CV pics, tender and competition submissions, social media and just for a general record. I’ve been doing Conran & Partner’s for a couple of years now and while I was back in their Brighton offices in March I took a series of quite simple and understated portraits. It’s good fun doing these types of portraits – I try to get the staff to come up in pairs so they chat to each other while I take the pictures. I keeps everyone relaxed and smiling (almost…)

This is the photography blog of clickclickjim, Jim Stephenson Architectural Photographer. As always, plenty o’ pics on my website.