Commercial photography
Unusually for a web design agency, I’m photographer (BA (Hons) and screen designer by background, rather than a techie, so my website are visually appealing and user friendly. I offer contemporary and stylish product photography to boost your business image. As potential customers are now used to seeing high-quality product images, it’s in your interest to ensure your own business photographs don’t let you down.
TIP: If you fish out your phone and take a product snap with a bleary lens and black dustbin bags in the shot, then think about what this says to your customers: messy and can’t be bothered. Take my advice and get professional images that showcase your work or products. See below for some of my work.
Portable Studio photography
For smaller products, I can photograph in situ – without the need to take products away. You can supervise the shoot and decide then and there your final image selection. A simple ‘light tent’ can help produce amazing images, quickly and easily.
Painted backdrop, curved for infinite view. Daylight with reflector, fill flash and LED modeling lights. Accurate colour for e-commerce.
I can work with your supplier photographs or can take new images of your work to order. I also process photos specifically for print, signage, display, POS, van wraps or social media marketing – all ready for use. All photographs I use on websites are optimised by me for SEO search results on Google, archived and handed over on request or kept safe for future use.
The choice of successful business – Butler Court Kilkenny:
Interiors Photography for Butler Court guest accommodation, downtown kilkenny. Very successful business, highly recommended by USA Travel guru Rick Steves Guide & Trip Advisor guest reviews. Repeat business has built over the years due to owners tireless efforts.
Butler Court guest accommodation. Kilkenny. Room photos for website & wall decor photos.
Weepers, Jerpoint Abbey, room decor photo for Butler Court. Butler Court has a large audience on Facebook. The guests are very keen on Heritage, so we like to use photos from Kilkenny City & County to encourage social media sharing and repeat visits.
Kitchen counter top brochure photography for Stoneworld.ie | Flash & ambient lighting mix. Counter top height & access designed for wheelchair user. We wanted a natural photo, so didn’t rearrange anything for the shot.
Real homes photographs for website, van panels etc. With the kind co-operation of the owner, I photographed this kitchen for Stoneworld.ie – suppliers of Silestone kitchen worktops. Natural light, blended with a touch of fill flash.
This shot required mixed lighting as well as a tripod to get two images in one. Post-processing in Photoshop allowed a blend of the two images to show power socket extended but transparent.
Where to use your photos
Photos are suitable for Brochures, display, flyers, trade shows, press adverts, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest & YouTube movies:
Slideshow with music, from my photographs taken for Stoneworld.ie brochure & website. Very successful company based in Bagenalstown and supplying the South East with Quartz & Granite kitchen counter tops. YouTube movies like this will provide an effective lead-in to your website if they are correctly optimised.
Kitchen Counter Tops. Brochure & web images for Stoneworld | Bagenalstown
“We are getting great feedback from the website. People like the way it looks and are finding us on Google”. Niall Jordan | Stoneworld.ie
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Scenic photography for accommodation providers and tourism bodies, Carlow, Ireland
Instagram for your business
Did you know? – Instagram reaches a vastly different audience than Facebook or Twitter. It’s more about visuals and it’s well worth using Instagram to promote your business. The secret is in the correct hashtags. You also have an automatic feed on your website, showing your Instagram updates without any input from you.
Contact us for our new Instagram service.
Photography for local tourism
Photographs with a purpose: The renowned Carlow Garden Festival is an annual event, largely based around the County’s ‘Big Houses’ & gardens. I used their display board to take a photo that encapsulated the Festival’s theme in an image that could be shared on social media or sent with press releases. A higher res version was used for print.
Signboard photography for tourist body, Carlow.
The Wild Bunch – seasonal flowers, grown in Kilkenny. Click photo for website
The Wild Bunch grow organically. Their inspired designs, using seasonal flowers have led to them being hugely in demand by brides and event organisers. I designed a basic WordPress website for them and they update it constantly. I also took some photographs like the one above. Check them out here
Garden & Nursery Photography: I’m a keen gardener & I’ve photographed the courtyard garden for Butler Court, carried out nursery photography for Darver Nursery, Altamont Plant Sales and The Wild Bunch plus I’ve carried out extensive garden photography for Carlow Tourism | Carlow Garden Trail | Carlow Garden Festival (including guest speakers’ portraits | Ireland’s Ancient East photographic database.
Altamont Plant Sales, photography for Robert Miller’s Instagram posts.
The Cafe at Altamont Plant Sales, photography for Robert Miller’s Instagram posts.
Photographs can be used for print, web, social media and Powerpoint or display purposes. Great value too! Contact me here to showcase your garden.
Irish Scenics: “The pictures are wonderful, thank you ever so much”. Henry Malone, Carlow Association, New York City.
The gardens at Hardymount House, Carlow. Client Carlow Tourism | photographic database for Ireland’s Ancient East campaign.
Why choose me?
- Competitive day rate.
- Twenty years’ experience in commercial work.
- I hand over all images on final payment & archive images for future use.
- Post-production processing included in final images.
- I provide interiors photography, architectural photography, product photography, small object product photography, process photography, scenic & press / PR photography – all to the highest standard.
- My photography is suitable for your website, display & brochureware.
- and finally, sorry no weddings ;-(
Background:
- My photographic work has been widely published since 1985 in books, magazines, brochures, presentations, online and for social media including Facebook, Twitter & Instagram campaigns.
On my days off, I go out and take yet more photographs. I’m fortunate to live in Ireland and never short of subject matter. See some of my personal photography linked below:
Personal photo gallery & feeds:
Here are some of my ‘personal project’ monochrome and Instagram coloured photographs:
Environmental portraiture
The Archivist
Taken early one Sunday morning. Irish historian & archivist John Kirwan was assembling research material on Kilkenny and the Great War for a future publication. I used my unobtrusive Canon G5 camera to try and catch a candid shot of him amongst his research materials. I think you have to become the Invisible Man to get good portraits. Luckily he was talking to someone else, so stopped noticing me. Natural light. The warm colouring reflected off the walls helped a lot with this image.
The Gardening Writer
Shirley Lanigan at Altamont Gardens for Carlow Tourism. As often happens, this shot was sprung on me and I didn’t have my flashguns or reflectors to soften the shadows, but the setting was nice. It was used in publicity material afterwards.
Personal photography project – WW1 battlefields
One of my ongoing personal photography projects is visiting the WW1 battlefields of the Somme and Ypres Salient. Both my grandfathers were ‘in it’ for the whole war. Both volunteered and survived. I never met them, but it’s good to walk the same fields and towns they would have known then, carrying rifle and pack. In a way it’s a tribute to what they suffered. I was named after them, James Francis Burke and William Sleightholm.
Somme landscape. The white marks are the remains of German trenches, dug into the chalk and scattered by a century of ploughing. I took this near the Lochnagar mine crater, looking towards Becourt and Fricourt. On one level, it’s a peaceful landscape, but underlying that is the knowledge of what horrors took place here.
German war cemetery at Langemarck, Ypres Salient in Flanders. Unlike the English garden-themed British war cemeteries around here, the German cemeteries are ‘concentrated burials’, or mass graves. What was nice to see was the English remembrance cross, left by a visitor. Hitler was filmed visiting here during WW2. It’s a sobering place to visit, in what was once a nightmare landscape, fought over for 4 years. My grandfather, James F Burke, was in action here in WW1 with the BEF Worcesters. His mother was German and his father Irish.
I am admin and photographer for a Kilkenny WW1 project on Facebook – click here.
Thiepval memorial to the missing of the WW1 Somme battles. 73,000 names are listed. Men whose bodies were never found. I talked to this man who is from County Offaly in Ireland. His grand uncle is listed. He was 19 and due to inherit a farm but was killed and has ‘no known grave’ as official language put it. Like all Irish soldiers, he was a volunteer.
Unknown Soldier, Fricourt German war cemetery, Somme. Of the 17,000 burials at Fricourt only 5,057 German soldiers have an individual grave. They are buried in groups of 4. The rest are interred in a mass grave, marked by the stone in the background.