Mercedes Benz World restaurant relaunch

Recently I had the pleasure of photographing the revamped restaurant at Mercedes Benz World in Weybridge. It’s a spectacular modern building that incorporates a museum, offices and a café and restaurant as well as a car dealership.

My brief from the client for this job was to photograph the refurbished interior of the EQ restaurant, and then cover the opening party afterwards.

Restaurant interior photography

I have a couple of different approaches that I use when photographing interiors. One is to set up various lights so as to control the illumination in the room completely. Alternatively, I work with the environment’s own lighting, whether that’s tungsten or LED lights, or daylight, or a mix.

In some cases I add one or two flashes to highlight specific areas, blended with the ambient lighting.

In this instance I started out just using the lighting that was there, as we had a nice mix of light fixtures creating atmosphere blended with some daylight from outside. Later on, I added one flash to highlight the table settings in some of the photographs.

While I was there I also took some photos of Café 1886 downstairs in Mercedes Benz World, giving the client some additional images for their photo library.

Corporate event photography – restaurant launch event

Once the guest of honour, the Mayor of Elmbridge Councillor Rachel Lake, had arrived, the party got started! When I photograph corporate events like this I usually try and be as unobtrusive as possible and just capture “moments”. Sometimes I can get away without using flash. If I do need it (as in this case) then I use a minimal amount and bounce it off the ceiling rather than firing it directly at people! That produces a softer light as well as being less annoying.

Overall it’s a matter of creating storytelling images that the client can use on their website, in print or on social media. I’m showing colour images in this blog post but I always deliver a complete set of black and white images as well, to give the client a choice.

Here’s a selection of images from the restaurant shoot and also the opening party. Please do get in touch if you’d like to know more about my interiors or corporate event photography services.

Mercedes Benz World restaurant relaunch