A good while back Halo Media offered me a rather unusual commission - to photograph work at a plastics moulding company. It wasn't however the thermoforming that they were particularly keen for me to capture. The company, Cox Wokingham Plastics, were redesigning their promotional material and online presence and wanted to put their employee’s wealth of experience at the centre. Halo liked my Brits Abroad project and wanted a similar approach for portraits of employees as well as the processes and methods Cox Wokingham use.
If you have never been to a plastics moulding company you probably would not expect to find so many fascinating things to photograph. You may not even expect to meet people passionate about moulding plastics, but Cox Wokingham’s place in Berkshire is full of them. I was given complete access to anywhere in the factory and with my protective eyewear in place proceeded to photograph those wonderful engineers talking about the art in their work. And then there were the machines: CNC drilling machines spraying plastic and water everywhere, heaters melting plastic and then shaping it magically into airplane seats, plus plenty more to get the boyish geek in me excited. What is it about big, noisy technology that makes it so fascinating?
Thank you to Halo Media for this unusual assigmenet and Cox Wokingham Plastics for showing me a bit of a world I would otherwise never be a part of.
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Labels: advertising, branding, commercial, commission, cox wokingham plastics, halo media, industrial, plastic moulding, portraits, portraiture
