What unusual photo jobs have you done ?

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John
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I think there will be a LOT more unusual photos jobs on here but for me who normally does wedding I have been asked to

Photograph a farmer in a field for a seed company

and today I am off to photograph a new Xray machine in a hospital

I only advertise myself for weddings but keep getting phone calls :thinking:
 
I used to shoot products, but I've shot metal boxes in the dark lit with atorch (long exposure light painted)' hand shakes over f1 cars at 5:30am as the boss was flying out at 7am. That was an early start and very interesting.

Strangest was possibly being asked if I'd shoot boudour as a surprise for a husband, from a be elderly lady ;), although I did once shoot a lass topless around the sports cars. As she put it, an image of his two favourite toys together...
 
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A pagan wedding. They are (in a good way) NUTS!!!!!! Whilst photographing them in a woods after the service, they said "shall we go sky clad?" Not knowing what sky clad meant I said yes if you want to. So they all stripped off and ran around the trees naked. Mad, wonderful people! :)
 
From 1962 -70 I was a scientific Photographer at University College London, Department of Geology -- in 1969 the Americans sent over a microscope slide containing particles of Moon Dust which was part of the first sample that Neil Armstrong put into his pocket -- well I had all the Professors into my Photo Department peering at the screen of my Vickers Armstrong Projection Microscope -- a HUGE thing with a Carbon Arc as illumination !! The main photo I took was published as Half Page pic in the 'Times' newspaper ( NO FEE TO ME !! ) with the story that there was a piece of 'glass' formed by the action of the Sun on Silica on the Moon's surface -- I didn't let on that I was SUSPICIOUS as if it was 'glass' how come I could squash the object under the cover slip ? It turned out it was a piece of PLASTIC broken off from the sieve the Yanks had used to get all the 'Best Bits' before sending over the rubbish to the Poor Bloody Brits !!

Moon Dust 1
by pentaxpete, on Flickr



Moon Dust 2
by pentaxpete, on Flickr
 
I used to shoot outdoor cinema events. The organisers would hire out a small piece of woodland and put up a 15ft inflatable screen and show a variety of films. One week it would be a film like ET, and then they would do adult nights where they would show things like Friday the 13th...in the woods...in the dark :eek:
 
I got asked a couple of years ago if I would do some photos for a local strip club. They were introducing a new Burlesque night and they wanted to put together a calendar. I asked a couple of friends to come and help me and on a Saturday afternoon we spent a few hours in the closed club. Apparently the owner had asked 12 of the girls to turn up in their buresque outfits for the shoot but only 5 of them turned up and none had their outfits. So instead of 4 hours of shooting tasteful artistic burlesque for a calendar we ended up shooting 5 strippers who had absolutely no shame or inhibitions. Certainly fairly unusual for me!!
 
I got asked a couple of years ago if I would do some photos for a local strip club. They were introducing a new Burlesque night and they wanted to put together a calendar. I asked a couple of friends to come and help me and on a Saturday afternoon we spent a few hours in the closed club. Apparently the owner had asked 12 of the girls to turn up in their buresque outfits for the shoot but only 5 of them turned up and none had their outfits. So instead of 4 hours of shooting tasteful artistic burlesque for a calendar we ended up shooting 5 strippers who had absolutely no shame or inhibitions. Certainly fairly unusual for me!!

Sounds awful...
 
The strangest job my wife did was in the 70's
She was called out by the local kent police to photograph a man who had climbed a power transformer and become charred and stuck to it.
I missed that one by about an hour, I did not even have to process and print it, as the film was sent to a police lab.
 
Blimey - I've done (besides weddings) amongst others

A fetish catalog
Bum chums pants
Nhs slimming club

And possibly the hardest a boudoir hen party
 
Hi, Quite a while back I was called out fairly early one morning by the Met Police in South East London to photograph a 10 foot high brick wall that had been partially knocked down by a milk float coming out of the exit to a hotel forecourt. I didn't know until I got there and started to get some shots that crushed to death under the rubble was a lady that had been waiting at the side of the entrance to cross.
 
A pagan wedding. They are (in a good way) NUTS!!!!!! Whilst photographing them in a woods after the service, they said "shall we go sky clad?" Not knowing what sky clad meant I said yes if you want to. So they all stripped off and ran around the trees naked. Mad, wonderful people! :)
And did you join in with the nakedness???
 
Well just spent the morning photographing state of the art Xray machine in an operating theater in Durham university hospital. Its a stunning bit of kit and the whole operating theater is like something out of star-trek. The Xray machine is a robotic arm the can zoom over any area of the body. Katie and I had to wear scrubs to go in and we had to wait a while for the surgeon to turn up as he had an emergency amputation to take care of first..... Sheesh!! how dare he keep me waiting....

Having this Xray machine here is brilliant for Durham as the only other place you will find one of these is in London
 
Crumbs ... you lot have a much more interesting time than me. The most unusual thing I've ever been asked to photograph is the various pieces of a chess set .... But, speaking as a middle aged lady ... I'm not sure I'd find all those naked ladies (and others) anything other than a bit boring ....
 
Crumbs ... you lot have a much more interesting time than me. The most unusual thing I've ever been asked to photograph is the various pieces of a chess set .... But, speaking as a middle aged lady ... I'm not sure I'd find all those naked ladies (and others) anything other than a bit boring ....

I was thinking the same, the most unusual I have done is a Midi Harp, the only fully functioning one in the world at the time, which also involved 2 of us trying to cart it around the BBC Maida Vale recording studios through low doorways without catching its brand new paint job! Must be a middle aged woman thing, we only get asked to do sensible things :LOL:
 
Hi, Quite a while back I was called out fairly early one morning by the Met Police in South East London to photograph a 10 foot high brick wall that had been partially knocked down by a milk float coming out of the exit to a hotel forecourt. I didn't know until I got there and started to get some shots that crushed to death under the rubble was a lady that had been waiting at the side of the entrance to cross.

Oh dear a bit gruesome then...so a nasty surprise for you then
 
Must be 20 years ago maybe, I once spent a day and a half hunched over nearly half a miliion quids worth of state of the art retouching computer ( pre photoshop ) removing the chewing gum from the pavements of South London that were spoiling the pictures of bus shelters I had shot.
For a client, personally I have only a passing interest in bus shelters.
Glamorous stuff huh ?
 
Rude vegetables.
 
I've also had quite a boring life compared to you lot.

Probably the most 'unusual' was rickshaws which we're being imported by a local company direct from China, back in the 80s when not many were doing business behind the bamboo curtain, and way before rickshaws were a common site on Western city streets.
 
X-Rays! I'm haunted by them. I went to Kosovo in 2000 to exhume and photograph mass graves in Pristina with UNMIK (United Nations Mission in Kosovo) we had a Radiographer with us who x-rayed the bodies at the Post Mortem examination looking for ballistic evidence. While I was there BFBS (British Forces Broadcasting Service) was showing Nazis a Warning From History. I remember thinking....these people have learned nothing. Shocking but very interesting work. One of those jobs you wish you were never involved in and as I said earlier, I'm still haunted by the experience.
 
Thanks everyone for sharing some amazing stories ....some funny some sad and some mad. I reckon these stories would make a good book
 
I've had a couple.

I was asked to shoot photos for a calendar for a double glazing/conservatory company. They wanted photos of the various machines in the factory

The other one was when I got a phone call from a solicitor who wanted photos for an injury claim. I arrived at the client's house and he was wearing shorts as it was a knee injury. 'That's a good start' I thought' but it didn't help when I had to ask which knee! Let's just say I had to use a macro lens and manual focus as the AF couldn't find anything to lock on to!
 
I was tasked with shooting some Revlon products last month.....including a pile of their "designer labelled" condoms!
 
I also had to shoot a farmer and his cows Phone call day before shoot, only 4 images wanted well took 10 mins got 200 images and the 4 needed all in the bag..
Must say one of the models was a bit of a cow :)

Why have you got beef with the model?? :rolleyes:
 
Must be 20 years ago maybe, I once spent a day and a half hunched over nearly half a miliion quids worth of state of the art retouching computer ( pre photoshop ) removing the chewing gum from the pavements of South London that were spoiling the pictures of bus shelters I had shot.
For a client, personally I have only a passing interest in bus shelters.
Glamorous stuff huh ?

Interesting, paintbox?
 
Interesting, paintbox?
The Quantel Paintbox !! I had forgotten, I do remember they had recently done the cover for Queen's The Miracle and were pleased.
It cost them a fortune and they were worried that their loan would not be paid off before Photoshop made their prices uncompetitive.
I am guessing they didn't , shame they were nice blokes.
I was never that pleased that Photoshop caused the end of LivePic either.
 
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The Quantel Paintbox !! I had forgotten, I do remember they had recently done the cover for Queen's The Miracle and were pleased.
It cost them a fortune and they were worried that their loan would not be paid off before Photoshop made their prices uncompetitive.
I am guessing they didn't , shame they were nice blokes.
I was never that pleased that Photoshop caused the end of LivePic either.

Company's still going - I worked for them for 15 years, got made redundant in the last round of redundancies 15 months ago.
Heavily into broadcast and post production now.

paintbox was doing things like this before Photoshop was even thought of...
images
 
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Company's still going - I worked for them for 15 years, got made redundant in the last round of redundancies 15 months ago.
Heavily into broadcast and post production now.

paintbox was doing things like this before Photoshop was even thought of...
images

I am glad they survived, sorry to here about your redundancy tho' .

Paintbox was amazing, dedicated hardware and software as I recall, and it worked in real time,
you could ' paint ' with it and see what you were doing rather than ' paint ' with it and watch the little buffering thingy go round for a while before you decided it was not what you intended in the first place :) . Brilliant machine, shame I never got to use it for something interesting.
 
I had the chance to record this a few years ago. It is a used engine of V2 Ballistic missile which exploded in the canal at Barking In East London towards the end of the 2WW. The only reason it survived reasonably intact is deemed due to a side effect of exploding underwater in the deep canal . Those nozzles on the top are all fuel and liquid oxygen inlets..some with steering if I remember the mechanics right...or steering was the whole thing was on a gimbal so it could be tilted and corrected.

V2engine.jpg
 
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