Personal Trainer & Gym Owner 

Meet Paul Clutterbuck, director & head coach at 1st4Fitness gym in Bicester.

Paul is a real gentleman doing what he knows and loves most.

Like you and I, Paul is a dedicated business owner consistently striving to provide the best advice, service and motivation for his clients. Just visiting his gym in Bicester, you'll see him there at every hour of the day putting in the time at his desk to keep things in order or up a ladder fixing and improving things no one else would notice needed fixing.

 I was introduced to Paul when he, and business partner Louise, were interested in offering their gym clients a fitness photography shoot.

 The photoshoot would serve as both an incentive for people working hard to aim for and as a record of all the effort that his clients were putting in at the gym.

It wasn't necessary for candidates to be in the absolute best physical condition though. One person might have used the photoshoot as a target date to celebrate the month they finally reach peak condition for competition whilst another may have reached their personal best, and another might celebrate the fact that they even made it to the gym. 

It was decided that Paul may as well take the lead and be the first one to show off his hard work.

First we looked at the overall style aesthetic. Together we looked at examples of images that Paul had seen elsewhere and liked.  I was then able to reverse engineer the technical aspects in my mind.

In addition to celebrating the physical effort he had put in for his own physique, Paul mentioned that he could also do with some images that compliment his brand message, so with that in mind we planned out the most suitable shot list to straddled both these aims. 

As a quick tip, when planning your own branding images, its always a good idea to think about where and how you will use them alongside text and graphics. 

The fact that these portraits are dark with the subject surrounded by negative space ( no details, empty space ) allows Paul to overlay text without compromising the aesthetic of the image itself.

You can see this being utilised here on Paul's Facebook post.

  Subsequent photoshoots at Paul's gym were tailored to the people who work closely with Paul at the gym.

  We all have different goals and achievements in life and in the gym so we wanted to treat each person to an individual photoshoot that focused on them specifically.

  Although everyone was photographed on separate occasions with a variation in style, the fact that all the shoots were carried out in the same gym space helped maintain aesthetic continuity for Paul to use these images in his posts on social media too.

Disclosure: These people are not models.

They all found it really difficult overcoming their own demons and self consciousness before every shot but their friends in and out of the gym celebrated their efforts and these images are testament to their amazing achievements.