The most useful first email says what needs photographing, roughly when, and where the pictures will end up. Two sentences is plenty. We answer everything within three business days, including the enquiries we are not the right studio for.
If you would rather talk it through, the telephone is answered between ten and five on weekdays and goes to voicemail while a shoot is running. Email is genuinely faster, and it leaves a record both of us can refer back to when the quote is written.
None of these are required. Send a single line if that is all you have and we will ask the rest. But if you already know the answers, including them saves a round of emails and usually a week.
People, objects or rooms, and roughly how many of each. For product work an item count matters more than anything else: eight pieces and eighty pieces are different days, and a range of forty with three colourways each is really a range of a hundred and twenty.
A website, a printed catalogue, a trade stand, a listing on a marketplace, an annual report. This changes the crop, the resolution, the background and sometimes the whole approach, and it is the question most often left out of a brief.
Both the shoot date, if it is fixed, and the date the finished files have to exist. Our standard delivery is ten to fourteen business days after the selection is agreed, so a hard deadline two weeks out needs saying up front rather than discovering later.
One person who can approve on the day, whether they are standing at the monitor or watching the live tethered view from their own desk. If that person is not you, it is worth putting them on the email from the beginning.
Enquiry form
Three fields, because we do not need anything else to start a conversation. If you would rather write a proper email, hello@stillwater.example.com reaches exactly the same place.
The split is for our filing rather than for your benefit, so do not agonise over which one to use. Anything sent to the wrong address gets forwarded the same morning.
hello@stillwater.example.com
Quotes, availability, shot lists, questions about whether a job is even the kind of thing we do. This is the address on every page of the site and the one to use if you are unsure.
Shooting hours and enquiry hours are different things. During a shoot the phone is not answered and email is read at lunchtime, which is worth knowing if you are expecting a reply on a Wednesday afternoon.
| Day | Shooting | Enquiries | Visits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monday | By arrangement | 10:00 – 17:00 | No |
| Tuesday | 09:00 – 18:00 | 10:00 – 17:00 | 10:00 – 16:00 |
| Wednesday | 09:00 – 18:00 | 10:00 – 17:00 | 10:00 – 16:00 |
| Thursday | 09:00 – 18:00 | 10:00 – 17:00 | 10:00 – 16:00 |
| Friday | 09:00 – 16:00 | 10:00 – 15:00 | No |
| Weekend | Location work only | Closed | No |
Enquiries are answered within three business days and usually within one. A written quote follows within three business days of us having enough information to write one, which is not always the same thing — if we are waiting on an item count or a location address, we will say so rather than sit on it.
During the two weeks we close at the end of December, and the week we close in August, email is read once every few days and the telephone is not answered at all. Those dates go on the voicemail well in advance.
If something has gone wrong on a live job — a delivery has not arrived, a file will not open, a shoot has to move — telephone rather than email, and keep telephoning. We would far rather be interrupted mid-setup than have a client sit quietly with a problem for a day and a half.
Short-notice bookings are worth asking about. We hold a small number of slots each month for exactly that, and the answer is sometimes yes.
Stillwater Studio
Fifth Floor, Unit 12
Riverbend Works
Northbank Quarter
The building is the long brick works on the north side of the river, set back from the road behind a yard. The main entrance is the glazed door in the middle of the frontage; the studio is on the fifth floor and there is a lift. Press 12 on the panel by the door and one of us will come down if the buzzer is not answered — it is a large room and we do not always hear it.
On foot from the town side, cross at the footbridge and turn left along the towpath; the yard entrance is the second gate. It is about eight minutes from the transport interchange and the walk is flat and lit.
Street parking around the yard is metered, two hours maximum, and usually findable before ten in the morning. There is a paid car park two minutes away on the same street, which we can validate for full-day bookings if you tell us in advance that you are driving.
Deliveries and anything heavy go to the loading bay at the rear, off Stillwater Lane, where there is a goods lift. Please tell us when a delivery is due so somebody can meet the driver; the bay is shared with three other tenants and nothing gets signed for automatically.
Step-free access from the rear entrance on Stillwater Lane, and a lift to all floors. The shooting floor is level throughout with no thresholds, and the washroom on our floor is accessible. If you have a specific requirement, tell us when booking and we will confirm exactly what we can and cannot accommodate rather than guessing.
Yes, and it is usually the fastest way to work out whether the room suits your project. Appointments run Tuesday to Thursday between ten and four and take about twenty minutes. Please write or telephone ahead rather than turning up: if a shoot is running we will not be able to open the door, and standing in a yard is nobody’s idea of a good introduction. If Tuesday to Thursday is impossible, say so — we can occasionally open the room first thing on a Monday, and it is far better to ask than to make a wasted journey.
We can hold a date over the phone for seven days, but a booking is only confirmed when we have a signed quote and the deposit. That is not bureaucracy for its own sake — the quote is the document that says what the day includes, what the licence covers and what happens if it overruns, and both of us are better off with it written down. Quotes go out as a PDF and are signed by return email, which takes about two minutes and has never yet held a booking up.
We close for two weeks at the end of December and for one week in August. Those dates are confirmed on the studio voicemail well in advance, and any booking that falls near them is flagged at the quoting stage. Everything on this page was last reviewed at the start of the year; the main page carries the current rate card.