iPhone Wanderings In Holland

Like many other photographers as well as shooting with more Professional equipment I love the challenge of shooting with my iPhone.

This week after shooting a job in Rotterdam on Monday  I had a few hours the following day before flying home to explore Rotterdam & Amsterdam.

Here are a few snaps from my wanderings with some more of the serious stuff to follow.

Bike-on-bridge-amsterdam

Rotterdam-buildings

South Wales To Central London

One of the great things about doing advertising work is you never know what’s going to come in with the next phone call or email.
Last Friday this week looked like being a fairly quiet and relaxed one but it proved far from it.
On Tuesday we found ourselves heading across the bridge to Cardiff for a couple of meetings regarding a potentially very large commission we had put a proposal in for the just the previous week.
Thursday we found ourselves on the road again this time heading for Central London at fairly short notice for a nice little shoot.
Now I love shooting in London but driving through the centre is not for the faint hearted especially when your idea of heavy traffic normally consists of 2 0r 3 horses or a tractor and trailer blocking the narrow country lanes.!
Glad to say I transformed into city driving survival mode and breezed (kind of) in and out without any problems.
As I said love working in London but it’s kind of nice to get home away from the crazy roads !
Have a great Whitsun everyone..

 

Sweeping-mimecast-london

 

 

 

 

 

Joyful Memories At The Beach

I’ve lived by the coast pretty much all my life and as a result it has featured in much of my work over the years and still inspires me to create new work.
This beach scene was captured during a visit to the Algarve in Portugal last October with the model being captured last week at the beach in the south west.

Life-0016

 

Recovery

It’s been a bit of a tough year both personally and for the area I live and love that is still recovering from the recent floods.
This week I took a break from a hefty amount of marketing to do some walking and take some therapeutic snaps while I was at it.
Pointing my camera without any plans to what I wanted to specifically capture is not something I do a lot of these days so it was a bit like yoga for the creative muscles to just follow my nose.
I decided to head a few miles from the Studio to the edge of the Somerset Levels at Hambridge where just a few months earlier was several feet underwater and the road totally unpassable at least by car.

I’m glad to say I found a drastic change to the area since my last visit and everything appears to be returning to some kind of normality.
That is not to say that the signs of the devastation where not evident in fact I came a cross everything from flattened rotting withy trees to dead Deer (although that was probably due to a car than the flooding).
Although many fields still looked saturated with water and mud a few did have some signs of growth in them along with hedges blooming with Blackthorn

 

Rubus “The Beast In My Lap!” Ad Campaign Kings Bruton School

Following on from last years very successful campaign which won Silver in The Graphis Advertising Awards  I received a call back in September from Ice House Design with another exciting brief for Kings Bruton School.

After a couple of meetings and an interesting recce of Kings very old (it was founded in 1519 !) & historic school the briefs where finalised.
The required image was pretty straight forward involving capturing Kings Bruton’s sports field and Church with the beautiful hills behind with the inclusion of the famous Dovecote on it’s hill.The Dovecote does not sit quite in than spot but with a little creative license I moved it into position a mere mile or so. The main element for the image and most difficult to potentially capture was to be a Stag.I always prefer to shoot my own images when creating composites but even I thought a stock shot may have to be sourced for this one. Fortunately after some research on good old Google and conversations with several people my good mate and manager at The Monks Yard where our studio is based provided me with a contact just a few miles away.
Mike Gage runs South West Deer And Rescue and was more than happy to help me out and I arranged to pop down to take a look around.Mike showed me the park and it’s gorgeous views across the Somerset countryside and the many species of Deer he had. He finished off by introducing me to Rubus and very large Stag with an amazing set of antlers..perfect !.

Being October it was rutting season and Mike warned me Rubus was pretty hormonal and I was not to get out the back of his pickup truck. Unfortunately it did not stop Rubus coming over and sticking his rather huge head of pointy bits almost into my lap trying to grab food from the floor of the truck…! It became obvious pretty quickly I definitely  have to wait for the randy Rubus to calm down from the rutting season before coming back to get my images.
After a few weeks I had gathered all the background material and I returned to see Mike and to capture Rubus.This time he was a fair bit calmer and I could with caution leave the safety of the pickup to get the angles I needed.The shoot went well without too many scares and I got all the material I needed within 30 minutes or so. The post production took a little longer however about 71 and a half hours longer to be precise but then the devil’s in the details and the final image had plenty.
Below is one of several adverts that are now running together with another version that did not showing more of the sports field with rugby posts and flags.

 

 

Rich Tea Deer !

Yeah awful title but it kind of describes what is going on in this image.
Last September I got a call from an agency called Ice House Design whom I had worked with on a very successful campaign the previous year which won Silver in The Graphis Advertising Awards.
The brief was to capture images for a composite they wanted me to create which was to include a Stag as the main element.With the brief in hand I started to look at my options for capturing the animal. After several calls and networking I found Mike Gage of South West Deer Rescue Centre.
To cut a long story short the shoot was a success and I’ll post the images once the campaign goes live.
Mike was a great character and I asked if I could return at a later date to shoot him for my personal project “Life In A Somerset Landscape” and this brings us to the image below.
My plan was to shoot him and his mate Pete sat on the rear of their beaten up 4×4 truck surrounded by Deer but the truck was out of action with a broken axle.
So as often is the case in the unpredictable world of location shooting I had to think on my feet and come up with an alternative idea.
We decided that a shot of the Deer being fed their favorite Rich Tea biscuits could provide the perfect image against the beautiful South Somerset backdrop.

 

Dry Path To Muchelney

You can’t live in the UK without having heard about the village of Muchelney in South Somerset which has recently become an island after the severe floods.
I live a few miles from the village and have managed until today to resist all temptations to venture out onto the Somerset Levels with my camera.
The two problems for me are firstly that the Somerset Levels are where I learnt my craft and they even after all these years are still one of my favorite places to go and shoot.
Secondly although I’m certainly no adrenalin junkie or risk taker I’m fascinated by extreme weather much to my wife’s disapproval and this means I can’t resist getting safely close as possible to explore & capture what I find.

The floods had receded just enough that some roads are now passable so today with stormy skies still overhead I ventured to a couple of places I thought might be safe and give me some great views.
This image titled “Dry Path To Muchelney” shows the severely flooded River Isle on the right and flooded fields to the left with a elevated path bank heading towards Muchelny.
The gentleman I met walking with his dog said how in 40 years he had never seen flooding this extreme in the area.His dog seemed less bothered by he water and more interested in the wildlife as there where lots of mice and other animals on the bank seeking safety from the waters.
The rains came in again giving some wonderful skies and I decided to shoot one more image before heading home.
As I mounted a gate to reach the flood line in a field I somehow lost my footing and ended up head first with my camera luckily on top of me !
It must have looked hilarious but must admit as I sit here writing this I’m pretty bruised and not getting any sympathy from the wife !
I hope for those hit hard by the floods in Muchelney and surrounding area that the water recedes soon so that the clean up can get started.

A Seat On The Todden

A Seat On The Todden

I’ve joked before that if I never picked up a camera again I’d still have enough images in my archives to keep me busy producing new work for the next 15 years.
Fair to say some many never see the light of day but it’s strange how things happen in life and you find yourself remembering certain places, moments & images and being inspired to dig them out.
This week a comment on a previous blog post prompted me to go back into some images I shot last summer in Cadgwith Cornwall.
The reasons behind the comments are actually incredibly sad (view A Tranquil Mooring  blog post)  but this inspired me to spend a few hours processing and retouching this image

A-seat-on-todden-cadgwith-cornwall

A-seat-on-todden-cadgwith-cornwall