A day (and a bit) in the life of a photographer.

Cornish Horizons is lucky enough to be part of a family of cottage agencies across the country and we all have access to a fantastic support team to help bring you the best holiday experience.  Part of our extended team are a couple of brilliant photographers; Steve and Dan.  They travel up and down the country taking incredible photos and videos and we asked them to let us know what a ‘day in their lives’ is like.

Dan and I have been asked to do a showcase shoot for a lovely new property in Cornwall called Sunspray.

What this usually means for us is a 3D Virtual Tour, a Video Tour, Drone Photography and Video, plus High-Quality Photography which all work together to market the idea of booking a property of this standard.

We were up early for some breakfast to fuel us for the long day ahead – always porridge!

After breakfast, it’s time to load the car, a 4x4 with the seats down, and the back is jam packed due to the amount of gear we needed for the showcase shoot. Having used the previous evening to clean lenses, sensors and ensure all cards are empty and batteries full.

We set off on our way to Mawgan Porth to shoot Sunspray. We arrived about 15 minutes after leaving the cottage we are staying in for the week.

The first job on the cards is to establish the best, most time efficient way to capture the essence of the property in these media types. Due to its location to other properties, it was evident that aerial drone photography would not be possible, nor beneficial, so we dismissed this immediately.

On arrival, the cleaners were still working away so we took this opportunity to do a walk around of the property and establish a plan and a walking route for the 3D tour camera. We also highlighted what food props we might need to dress up the property to the highest of standards.

We wrote a shopping list and popped to a local supermarket to buy fresh veg, flowers and fruit to use in the scenes. Upon leaving the property we noticed that the sky was perfect and the sun was in the best possible position for an external photograph of the property.  We dressed the exterior and got a lovely sunny external then after this left for the supermarket.

We returned to the property with bags full of fresh produce and the cleaners had just finished so it was time to get to work.

The first thing we do with any shoot of this type is to de-clutter unsightly objects such as draining boards, toilet rolls and bins which are essential but not attractive in photographs. Once this was done we lay the tables, set out glasses of wine and food and make the environments in each room as enticing as possible.

We worked as a team ensuring the downstairs part of the property was completely ready and I then started building the 3D tour by scanning the rooms in a logical walk-through pattern whilst at the same time photographing other rooms.

In the meantime, Dan had been preparing upstairs in the same way so that when I had finished upstairs would also be fully ready to shoot.

Preparing a property to this level does take a long time, and by this time it was early evening so we took a short break and ate some food we had purchased with the props.

Dan then continued the 3D scanner upstairs whist I started filming the rooms downstairs.

It was now 7:30pm and the sun was setting so we decided to create a time-lapse video of the sunset from the balcony which will act as an ending sequence to our video.

After this we continued shooting property details, and more filming. At this point the 3D tour was completed, as was the photography of the rooms, so it was time to focus on the video.

We were using a number of methods to film the rooms using slider rigs, pan heads and stabilised walkers. All contributing to a final video at a later date.

It was now completely dark outside and the sky was clear so I decided it was a good time to capture an evening external with the stars behind the property adding much more of a ‘wow’ factor to the external than the one we captured in the mid-day sun.

After more filming, tiredness was getting the better of us and the video quality so at 10pm we decided to call it a day (a long one at that) and return in the morning to finish off the shooting.

We then used the last of our strength to re-load the car and travel back to our accommodation ready to start again tomorrow.

By Steven Flanagan

Senior Photographer & Imagery Manager

The Original Cottage Company