Tempest Photography

Tempest Photography: school and graduation photography across the UK

Tempest Photography is a British photography company whose work centres on portraits and group images for schools, early years settings, graduations and military and uniformed services. The company presents itself as family-run and states that it has been active in school photography for more than eight decades. Its registered office is in St. Ives, Cornwall, and it operates through a team of photographers who, according to the company, live near the areas where they work.

Origins and company history

The business traces its beginnings to Horace Tempest, who travelled from school to school in Nottingham in the 1930s with photography equipment carried on a bicycle and trailer. On 16 June 1942, while serving as a firefighter with the Nottingham Fire Service, he registered Tempest Photography as a private limited company. The company later moved from Nottingham to Cornwall and describes itself as remaining a family-run business. It states that the name Tempest Photography has become associated with quality and service in school photography.

Photography services

The company's service range is organised around several distinct areas:

• School photography, including work with multi-academy trusts and primary leavers.
• Early years photography.
• Graduation photography.
• Military and uniformed services photography.
• Visual marketing imagery.
• Yearbooks and hoodies.

Tempest also refers to Tempest Travel and to characters named Timmy and Tilly within its site navigation, although the available material does not explain what these consist of.

Scale and production capacity

The company provides a set of figures describing its volume of work. It states that it will process one million images in 12 months and that during the autumn term it processes an average of 200,000 school portraits per day. It reports having taken a group photograph of 2,239 pupils, the largest it has handled, and says it can photograph 3,000 students in a single group image. It also states that it produced 22,000 yearbooks the previous year and that it photographs at 80 universities in the UK.

On staffing, Tempest reports 450 full-time photographers. It says it has invested £10 million since 2005 in a digital laboratory, which it describes as the most advanced photographic laboratory in Europe. The company also states that, on average, 85% of customers who leave Tempest return the following year.

Working method

Tempest presents its service as a streamlined process intended to make organising a photo shoot easier for the client. It emphasises that its photographers are local to the areas they cover and that the company aims to combine personality with professionalism on each shoot. The company describes its output as striking images without gimmicks or clichés.

Client feedback

The site includes a testimonial attributed to Shirley High School in Surrey, which states that the school was delighted with the whole package provided by Jolt Media, from initial consultation through photoshoot organisation and completion to artwork, the final product, delivery and cost, and that it would recommend them very highly. The same page also credits Jolt Media with website and design work.