Apr

Glamour Girls, Bike Show Poster

Several years ago I had the enviable position of being on a retainer for Trader Media Group.
At the beginning my main contract was photographing prestigious & sports cars for the cover of Trader Media’s Top Marques publication.
With a good creative relationship and understanding of what was required for Trader I was soon asked to take on other projects including photographing some glamourous images of young ladies for Bike Trader Magazine.
Most of the brief required studio shots of the girls for various posters,magazine cover and give away’s.
For this image which was to be a poster give away I suggested we move out of the comfort of the studio and it’s clinical white cove and try something above and beyond the brief.
Fortunately the creative director and I had worked together for nearly a year or more by now so trusted me.In fact I think he had got used to me pushing the brief a little and was one of the reasons the relationship worked so well.
I dont mind the studio but working on location just can’t be beaten for me although being winter I’m not sure the girls would not have agreed !

Apr

Wooden Horse & Treacherous Tides

The Bristol Channel can be a treacherous place.
For starters it has the second-highest tidal range in the world, the first is the Bay of Fundy in Canada.
So if that does not catch you out then there is the mud to contend with which claims many a tourist’s cars during the summer months.

I’ve lived along this coast for a large part of my life so I know to give it a lot of respect.
So it was partly this that intrigued me about the Mud Horse Fishermen who go onto the dangerous mudflats to retrieve fish from their nets.

They can only do this as they know the area and tides very well and also have their sledges known as Wooden Horses that keep them from sinking waist deep or more into the concrete like mud.
I had 20 years previous captured an environmental portrait of another of the fishermen but now only 2 survive and I decided to call Adrian Sellick to see if I might be able to capture him for my project Life In A Somerset Landscape
A time was arranged and I met up with Adrian a week later and also his father Brendan who was busy mending nets just a stone’s throw from the beach.

To my amazement, Adrian said he would drive us part of the mile or so out to where his Horse was anchored in his small 4×4 and I have to say I was pretty nervous about that after seeing so many vehicles devoured!
Thankfully I had nothing to worry about and with Adrian’s advise I managed to avoid stepping on the wrong type of mud and being swallowed up and got the shots I wanted before the tide turned.
The final image shows Adrian with his Wooden Horse with Hinkley Point Power Station in the background.

Apr

George The Greek Of Kos Castle

My wife and I purchased a holiday home in Turkey 8 years ago and so I have traveled to the Bodrum area of Turkey a fair bit.
On one such “Working Trip” (as I tell my wife) myself with several of my friends popped across to the beautiful Greek island of Kos for the day.It was during a tour around the Castle that I was drawn to this delightful man called George who was offering his services as a tour guide.
I knew straight away I had to photograph him so I sat out of the blistering May heat on a marble bench with him and struck up a conversation.
I mentioned we where over from Turkey where I had a home and he got slightly animated telling me why you should not trust the Turks !
It’s no secret there is a lot historic bad blood between the Greeks & the Turks and being in his 80’s he had obviously see a lot of it.
We continued to chat before my friends caught me up, so I captured his portrait and we said our goodbye’s.
I adore meeting,chatting and photographing people like George after all they have been there seen it and done it all.
If you ever find yourself on Kos keep an eye out for George although I suspect he might no longer be with us.

Apr

Retouching For A Seamless Hair Transplant “Surveying The Moor”

Photo Retouching For A Seamless Hair Transplant “Surveying The Moor”

This image came out of doing a favour for a friend who was setting up a business for house sitting dogs and needed some promotional images of herself with her dog Barney.

It was while on location shooting the portraits that we passed this huge fallen tree and Barney decided to climb on top and the image simply announced itself in front of me. Unfortunately Barney had a bright red harness on and due to sheep being in the vicinity it could not be taken off so using some careful photo retouching it was removed in Photoshop making sure to add suitable fine hairs for a seamless result.

The background was a landscape captured on Exmoor and proved a perfect fit with the correct colour grading.

Apr

Boris Takes Tea At The Yard

We had an unexpected visitor to our studio base at The Monks Yard today and I was asked if I could grab some promotion images.
Mayor of London Boris Johnson popped into the Yard for afternoon tea (but no cake ! ) and gave a quick speech.
He’s not the first former politician or celebrity to pop in and I’m sure not the last.

Apr

The 1943 Harley & D-Day Despatch Rider

Inspired by some very old musty prints and tales from my Mum and Dad about living and working through WW2 I set out to shoot some images that represented that era.
Through some research I managed to find a guy called Manny who had collection of WW2 memorbillia (and that’s a huge understatement !) who was also located not far from me.
I also thought Manny would be a great addition to my Life In A Somerset Landscape Project so I gave him a call.

As expected Manny was very passionate about the era and travelled to many of the re-enactments both here and abroad during the summer months.
During our telephone chat he mentioned the authentic 750cc 1943 Harley Davidson he had and a U.S infantryman’s uniform as worn in the D-Day invasion.

At that point the image came together at least in my head
We decided that we create a story where a U.S Army Despatch Rider from headquarters company is delivering messages to and from various units.
The setting would be a forest in northern France and so my next job was to find the location and arrange the logistics of getting Manny and his bike there.

A week later the pre production was finalised and the shoot day arranged.
Manny was a dream to work with bringing authentic maps,rifles,etc giving us plenty of options for many variations I may want to try.

As my work is about quiet moments I worked around the narrative of the rider taking a rest from riding on his dangerous assignment.

USA Army Dispatch Rider With 1943 Harley Davidson Taking A Break.

USA Army 1943 Harley Davidson Leather Pannier

USA Army Dispatch Rider With 1943 Harley Davidson.

Apr

“Waiting” Blending Passions

Solving problems and getting work completed fast and to the highest quality is what Advertising Photography is all about and something I get huge satisfaction from. Saying that just because something is assigned does not mean the same principles don’t apply to personal work it just means you are expressing your own creative ideas and solving your own problems to reach the final image.

This image titled “Waiting’ blends my love of Greek Mythology together with my passion of the Sea which I’ve lived close to for a large part of my life. It’s a worry really as I’m very consious that many of my images contain the coast in them to the point that I have to avoid placing too many in my Book or on my Website, but you can’t choose what inspires you to create.

Here is a short video of how the images all came together in post production.

[su_vimeo url=”https://vimeo.com/124748249″ width=”1280″ height=”720”]

Mar

Thinking On Your Feet, Football Portraits

The biggest part of what I do when commissioned is to problem solve.

When my regular client Yeovil Town Community Sports Trust who are the charity arm of Yeovil Town Football Club asked me to shoot (no pun intended) the Directors,Coaches and other staff there where several things to overcome.

The aim was to produce stylish images with continuity so that they looked like they where shot at the same time even though in fact they might (and were) shot weeks apart. I also had to work quickly as the Directors and Coaches both where very busy plus it was pretty cold to be standing around for too long.

I decided to use a small strobe on a pole off camera that would not only give a stylish lighting signature (& continuity in the look) to the images but also be quick & portable to use anywhere I might need to go.

Unusual for me I suggested we drop the colour from the images to avoid the distractions of various clothing people would be wearing and go for a subtle duo tone.

For the image below I composited the background to add to the football theme but the finished client images shown Here where left a simple clean black.

Mar

Wallpaper Photo…Art?

I’ve been selling my images as prints via a few small galleries for 20 odd years.In all that time I’ve never had an image reproduced as big as the one shown here. I was asked if I could supply the image titled “Wooden Walkway” by by neice who wanted to decorate her new home with it.

The image has sold many times both here and in the U.S.A and is probably my best selling image and I doubt it will ever be reproduced quite as large anytime soon.

Mar

Parisian Park

Occasionally when time permits I will dig into my archive and look at images that I’ve never used and simply have some creative fun. This is one such image which I captured while visiting an Advertising Agency in Paris about a job I had been shortlisted for. I decided to stay on after my meeting to spend a couple of days simply getting out at dawn with my camera and following my nose shooting whatever took my eye.I came back with several images that I published from the trip and many more that I did not do anything with which is sometimes the case.Like when I captured the images I decided just to enjoy the creative process of retouching and follow my instincts to end up with the image here which sums up the cool November morning in that park in Paris.

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