Copper & Cope are a creative agency specialising in the Sports, Leisure and Wellbeing sector, working for some sportswear manufacturers, training equipment manufacturers, as well as top personal trainers and influencers from the Sports industry, and as a result have a wealth of experience of knowing how to shoot action.
Scott Heavey, the founder of Copper & Cope, has been a professional photographer for nearly 20 years, shooting everything from Olympics, Premier League football and Premiership Rugby but during a shoot for a sportswear manufacturer he met the team who ran The Regal (part of the Black Prince Trust) in London, a sports based charity aiming to get kids off the street and into sport. During the shoot they got chatting about the desire to run a female only basketball session at The Regal and Queen of the Court was born.
The Regal, being a charity, did not have a budget to produce much content but Scott had an idea, which he wanted to share and to be able to provide The Regal with content that could help promote not only their female only basketball sessions but the charity as a whole, with both stills and video.
Scott had been trialling both the LUMIX S1 and LUMIX S1R to see how these cameras would fit into their workflow and they felt given the location, subject and delivery platform that the S-series cameras and lenses would be the best tools to help capture this dynamic subject in a way that would reflect his creative vision.
Queen of the Court is a tongue in cheek look at how society tends to stereotype girls of all ages, which often pushes girls away from taking part in a wide variety of sports and activities. During the shoot each of the athletes in the film said they could relate to the stereotype at some stages in their lives.
Dan Rowley shot all of the video on the LUMIX S1, while Tom Shaw used the LUMIX S1R and S-series 50mm f/1.4 to shoot and each was amazed by what was possible and the results.
