Staff Award Photos 2001 - 2002

My parents recently asked me to clear out some things that I’d left at their house before I moved to Hong Kong. Amongst samples of my old work, I found some posters that brought back lots of memories.

While I was starting out with my own photography and design business, I took a day job in an investment bond department at a large insurance company. I’d do nine to five in the office, then design and photograph during the evenings and at weekends. Most of my clients were bars, restaurants and clubs, so this arrangement worked well.

One fateful morning, I arrived at my desk feeling a little worse for wear. I was trying to sort myself out with a coffee and a bacon butty when I answered a phone call from an irate client. The caller wanted to write a complaint letter, so asked for my name and office address.

“My name is Paul Bradshaw”, I mumbled (with a mouthful of bacon butty).

The client then bellowed “What was that???… Bob???… Bob Badger???”

Being a particularly difficult complaint case, I’m ashamed to say I didn’t correct him. Perhaps the letter would be dealt with by someone else at the company.

A few days later, the office postman was doing his rounds when he dropped a letter on my desk with a cheerful “Letter for you, Bob!”

From that moment, I became known around the office as Bob Badger!

Before long, little toy badgers started appearing on my desk. I would often turn up to work and discover a new addition to the badger clan. My professional work desk soon resembled a shrine to monochrome mammals.

Occasionally, one of the badgers would disappear for a couple of weeks and I’d receive a postcard from it, from some exotic location.

I can’t say I really enjoyed the work at that company, but I met some great people and have many happy memories of my time there. I do miss the office Christmas parties too!

These days my black and white striped beard makes my badger alias even more appropriate!

Anyway, less of the irrelevant badger talk and on to the photography bit…

Supercheque Awards

The company had an incentives scheme that rewarded exceptional staff performance by giving out Supercheques (I’m not sure exactly what these were because Bob Badger never received one). Presentation ceremonies were held where Supercheque winners would gather for drinks and nibbles, and collect their prize from one of the bosses.

On the company’s intranet message board, I saw that the award organisers were looking for a member of staff to photograph the presentation ceremonies. Thinking it would be good for my portfolio and experience, I put myself forward for the job and also offered to design and print posters for the office notice boards.

The first event shoot went very well. Afterwards, I had the negatives  developed and 7x5 inch prints made, which I then scanned into my computer so I could design the layout for printing. The posters got a good response, so I was asked to do more events. Admittedly, I was probably the only person who answered the advert to take on the extra work (expenses only).

After successfully shooting these events for about a year, my heavily used second-hand Canon SLR broke days before I was due to shoot the next award ceremony. Luckily, I was able to borrow a very good Nikon SLR and lens from a friend. He didn’t have a flash gun, but that was fine, I could just use mine… or so I thought. The negatives came back from the photo lab severely underexposed and unusable. This probably happened because my flash and off-camera module was made to work with Canon cameras and didn’t sync correctly with my friend’s Nikon. Hard lesson learnt! Always check photo gear before a shoot! This is a lot easier to do now, with the advantages of digital photography.

Time to go into disaster recovery mode. A reshoot was highly impractical, and would be rather embarrassing, so I had to come up with a Plan B. The next day I used the office directory to locate the award winners and then took a photo of each of them, mostly at their desks. One award was presented to a team, so I had to persuade them all to go and stand on the steps outside the office for a group photo. This actually worked out well because only a few of the team attended the original award ceremony, but now they all got to be on the poster. These photos weren’t the usual style, with the winner shaking hands with the boss, but it was better than nothing.

In an attempt to further redeem myself, I climbed to the top of York Minster, which at 72 metres is the tallest building in the city (local bylaws prevent any other building being taller). From this vantage point I got an ‘aerial’ shot of the company’s office buildings, which I used as a background for the poster.

The Plan B poster received surprisingly positive feedback and I was still asked to shoot future events. By this point I was sure that I was the only person willing to do it!

The Nerdy Bit: Print Longevity

The above images are recent photos of the original A3 posters, which I printed in 2001 and 2002 using an Epson Stylus Photo 1280 dye-based inkjet printer. There is some concern about the longevity of inkjet prints, but these have held up very well. This can be attributed to the posters having limited exposure to light for most of the last 23 years. It looks like the top edge on a couple of the prints have absorbed more light, probably when protruding from a stacked pile, and have faded more rapidly in that area.

Of course prints are made to be displayed, but protecting them from strong light sources (especially direct sunlight) vastly improves their longevity. Framing prints behind UV filter glass helps a great deal. The newer technology of pigment ink printers can produce more durable prints, but care should still be taken.

Traditional chemical C-Type prints from colour film negatives can fade badly when exposed to light, as they also use dyes. Traditional black and white silver gelatin prints are more hardy because the image is formed by crystals of silver within the gelatin layer, instead of dyes. I’ve seen silver gelatin prints from a hundred years ago that look like they could have been made yesterday!