From the archive... #4

This is a nice little shot that's always been one of my favourites. But while it's simple, the picture also says a lot about the day in question. That 'photo is worth a thousand words' thing.

Without knowing the couple or anything about their wedding you can instantly tell it was a relaxed affair with a rustic feel - hence the chairs. We also know they have a sense of humour and thought it would be mischievous to coordinate shoes and socks - the focal point of the shot. The brogues tell you the groom is his own man and not swayed by the need to conform totally to the occasion. And you sense the bride loves the idea of being little daring with scarlett shoes. 

The wedding was in Shoreditch Town Hall, with the emphasis on fun, and the couple are as laid-back as they come. It was a tiny, personality-rich affair - which is always brilliant to shoot.

This shot has also directly led to more than one subsequent commission. The image sticks in people's minds and has even led to one couple copying them (see second shot). It just goes to show that you can chuck all the marketing and strategy you wish at your business, but it's the smallest things to which people respond...

Persian wedding, Pegah & Sam...

This recent shoot will always stick in my mind as something fun, stylish and wealthy in character.

Pegah and Sam are Iranian and shooting a Persian wedding was a first for me. The location was a private residence and  although it doesn't look like it, the day was blighted with frequent showers. 

The detail of the wedding ceremony feast, the guys in black tie and a lovely, happy bride made the day constantly interesting and its laid-back nature made for simple, personal photography and pretty close to ideal from my perspective. We've met up since to shoot some portraits, such was the extent of their enthusiasm for the final results.  A great day and a great couple.

As usual I haven't included the whole shoot, but here are my favourites from the set. Click any thumbnail to enlarge...

Mirror Mirror...

You've got to love a business that's only beaten in a search engine by a Hollywood movie... Punch Mirror Mirror into Google and the first thing you'll see is a Julia Roberts film. But right next to it is Mirror Mirror London, the UK capital's best-known bridal atelier. 

With shops in Angel, Islington and Crouch End, Mirror Mirror have their own couture dress line as well as stocking leading ready-to-wear designers such as La Sposa, Cymbeline, Paris and Yolan Cris. Their dresses have been worn by celebrities such as Amanda Holden, Zoe Ball and Tamsin Outhwaite. 

So it's really great news that I've just become a photographic partner and somebody, quite literally, that Mirror Mirror 'loves'. The business was formed in 1989 and since then has established tself as THE go-to outlet for brides. Numerous awards from the wedding industry press has cemented a reputation for excellence and ensured a bursting order book.

We'll be working together on numerous shoots in the coming weeks/months and it's terrific for me to develop new commissions and relationships via Mirror Mirror clients. Partners, Maria Yiannikaris and Jane Freshwater, are market leaders at what they do. I believe that when you are striving to be the best, you need to work alongside the best, so this makes me incredibly proud and excited.

It has also totally taken my mind away from having eaten too much Easter chocolate...

Fiona Leahy feature shoot...

I'd never met Fiona Leahy before, but a quick visit to her home in London immediately propels you into creativity. Then via some form of osmosis you leave with far more energy than when you arrived.

No point going into detail here, you can read all about the lady via the lovescarlett.com feature for which I was shooting. Suffice it to say that Fiona is an event planner extraordinaire, with Royal clients and celebrity friends, and I had a ball playing around with detail and some fun portraits shot very quickly indeed, all with natural light, no flash at all.

Consider this a blog-let which just touches upon the final selection produced. As usual, I'm not one for scores and scores of shots on a blog, you get the picture (boom boom)...

Love Scarlett...

couple of weeks ago I blogged the behind the scenes video to a portrait shoot in preparation for the launch of Love Scarlett. Well, yesterday the site went live and it looks the business.

A bold, sharp and stylish resource for couples who want to read about the very best in British wedding style, the blog feels like a high spec magazine with something for everyone ; wedding meets fashion meets lifestyle - updated daily.

I've been working with Penny Cullen on numerous shoots ready for today's launch, and while there is lots more great stuff in the pipeline, it's fair to say I'm super impressed with the way she has pulled it all together. Never one to rest and stand still, Penny has gathered together a bunch of leading individuals in the wedding industry to inform and excite, and such input will make Love Scarlett rich in depth. But the key is that everybody works together, a collective, so the sum of the parts leads to something fresh and different.

An initial feature getting some social media play centres around a wedding I shot alongside photographer, Anna Hardy. We were commissioned totally independently, a first for us both. Click here to read the piece..

From the archive... #3

It always intrigues me why people like certain pictures within a set. This little sequence is one on which clients always linger in my portfolio. Here's a little background...

The commission was a Christmas wedding last year with the drinks reception in a private residence. I had worked the room a little in search of off-beat and candid portraits, but kept noticing the little flower girl nipping away into one of the downstairs rooms.

didn't really pay much attention to this until I heard the piano certainly not making a great sound. After putting two and two together it was suddenly obvious that the little rascal was making her own entertainment...

Adopting my very best stealth approach, I let her just play around nd tried to shoot frames as she hit the keys, so as not to disturb the scene. It wasn't until she'd finished that my presence had been sensed, and she immediately scurried from the room. It's the last image and the look on her face which absolutely makes the set.

(Canon 5DMK2 body, 85mm lens, 1600asa, 60th @F2)

From the archive... #2

I'm often searching through my photographic library and repeatedly stumble across files from jobs past. Most of the time I just drag them back into the folders, but sometimes they have a little story attached...

Since 2004 I have enjoyed a brilliant working relationship with SEAT UK. Initially it was on the motorsport side, but this soon spread to studio portraits and event coverage. Great people with get-ahead ideas. They're also fabulously collaborative, which is always nice.

So it tickled me a little to come across this image, mainly because it was the very first thing I did, now almost exactly 9 years ago. I recall a perishingly cold Rockingham race track; the brief to shoot car-to-car shots for publicity material to promote the marque's one make championship.

Such shots are truly hair-raising to produce. You are strapped into a people carrier (with the back door wedged open) or, as in this case, put in the boot of a car with an assistant holding the boot lid open.  Either way the racing car is under your control, via various graphic gestures. Enough said.

Technically this is hand held at about 1/10th of a sec, which is slower than you'd usually opt for. But it's essential to obtain the feeling of speed so the track feels like it's rushing past - which is kind of is anyway! I chose to shoot this at the end of a January day because it was a lovely sky and the closing light added to the effect.

20 (and a bit) new things I learnt in 2012...

I'm an only child, which means I know everything, right?

Absolutely not. During a pretty brisk 2012 I picked-up a few new things. Notable among them are:

1) Talking to a brain surgeon is intimidating. And that's before you get into the 3D pics of the inside of your fiancé’s head.

2) Watching sport is not the pleasure it was when I was a kid. Sadly, only 1 in 10 sports men and women are actually proper role models. If that.

3) Living in an Embassy with infrequent trips out onto the balcony is no life.

4) London 2012 medals are very heavy. 

5) A 74-year-old man can stand on a new knee within 36hrs. Impressive stuff, Dad.

6) Sorting out a London crash pad is becoming a real issue and avoiding the subject is not a solution.

7) In an age where numerous methods of communication are amazing, actual communication is worse than ever.

8) Like everybody, I enjoy Instagram - it's cute. But, it's about as relevant to real photography as a microwave oven is to Michel Roux Jnr.

9) Women's mags are miles better than bloke's. Vogue makes GQ look limp.

10) Working hard is fine; thinking hard is far more profitable.

11) I still have no idea what 'fine art photography' means. And if I did, it's probably not a label for photographers to give themselves. It's for others to decide.

12) In recession there is more opportunity, not less. 

13) Social media is useful in its own way. But careers are built on relationships, not 140 character blurts. How can anybody feel satisfaction when their 'friends' or 'followers' are largely a group of people they've never met? #suckers

14) iPads are brilliant, but laptops still rule.

15) Meat should be expensive and a treat. Cheap meat is bad for you. There's a reason KFC comes in a bucket...

16) When an oncologist says chemotherapy makes you tired, they’re lying. It actually means you can't do anything. Nothing at all. It's a bewildering fog.

16a) Chemo is hard. But it can give you your life back. Still don’t understand why a guy as savvy as Steve Jobs didn’t get that. Tragic.

17) Berlin is the breakfast capital of the world...

18) I seem to read more than ever, but only managed one novel this year. Biographies and magazine features dominate. No idea why the pattern has changed.

19) It's the greatest pleasure to buy boat-loads of Green & Blacks in the knowledge the (85%) stuff is good for you. In moderation.

20) No news means, well, no news! But I remain the eternal optimist.

20a) ... I'm the luckiest person in the world.

 

A little spot of cancer...

On November 26th, 2011, I wandered into and an Ear, Nose & Throat clinic to see about my swollen glands. They looked at me, whispered in the corner, then suggested a needle biopsy was done there and then. It turned out to be Hodgkins Disease (cancer of the lymph nodes). This isn't the place to get into treatments and associated issues, but it does raise a very interesting situation re: freelancing when facing a serious illness.

At the time of the diagnosis I was thinking about refreshing my website, I had lots of project ideas and ongoing discussions with potential new clients. Then for months, nothing moved forward. Nothing. In 2012, I have had, on paper, a lesser output than for many years, mainly due to the time out for chemotherapy, but also because development of my career halted. Almost overnight everything I knew and took comfort from became somehow provisional. My own wedding was postponed. Nothing was certain anymore. It happened very, very quickly and was incredibly frightening.

Only now, a year on  - and thankfully in good health - am I building again. And it's deliberate that this blog post is the first as the new site goes live.

My mind is back in the swing of cultivating new opportunities and forging new ideas. I'm way behind compared to where I'd like to be but things are moving, gathering momentum again. It's cathartic to address this in writing. It's the first time I feel brave enough to admit and then address the career side of cancer. The process seems to rid my system of the bad memories and allows me to move on. Never again will I take everyday things for granted, and that's no bad thing at all. I'll push like never before. Be a better photographer than I was before. Make things happen.

It can pour with rain, flights can be late, traffic can snarl up and software can crash. I don't care. Because I no longer have cancer.

Look out world, I’m coming through. Again.

Suzie and Nick's engagement shoot...

An hour spent in Battersea Park in early summer, another nice memory of the year.

I'm beginning to shoot more and more engagement sessions. They are great for couples because in addition to having the shots they also act as the perfect ice-breaker, a practical feel for the way the photographic process works and then come the wedding day it's more relaxing - it means they've kind of done it all before.

No direction needed on this one, Suzie & Nick just went with it and relaxed. We walked, chatted and took pictures, easy as that. The closing light of a London weekday played perfectly into our hands and the angles came together organically.

A great evening with good people. You can't say fairer than that. Just a shame the ice cream place was shut. Still, can't have everything... Below are a handful of images from the shoot.

From the archive... #1

And this is literally a blast from the past. In a previous life I whizzed around the globe shooting motorsport in many shapes and sizes. Various commissions for motor manufacturers and sponsors took me to the US, Asia and countless European cities.

This is a particular shot which always sticks in my mind. It's an Indycar (US answer to F1) during practice for an event in Miami. Many stories from the trip... almost losing my credential, death-defying freeway driving and stumbling across a drug deal in a McDonalds! Maybe things for another post... Anyway, I've always quite liked the shot.

(Canon 1V (film camera) body, 200mm lens, 100asa, 20th @F22)

A photographer's diary...

Back in June I thoroughly enjoyed working with Melanie Helen of Cranberry Blue Weddings & Events. Mel has a fresh take on planning and over the last year or so we've had some great chats about collaborating on projects. (These conversations usually take place over a long lunch a One Aldwych!)

On Mel's blog is a basic overview of a wedding day from a photographer's perspective. It was fun to write and (I hope) interesting to read...