Waking up on a misty Saturday morning in the wonderful Gunton Arms, a delightful pub in a deer park in Norfolk, I could almost have shot this from my bed, but I dutifully got dressed and walked out in the morning dew for a better shot, justifying the leisurely breakfast that followed in the dining room with its open fire, oak settles and eclectic mix of art from Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, Gilbert & George and others - a unique and wonderful place.
Tollesbury Saltings, Essex
Abandoned wrecks on the marshes in Essex, dotted around the creeks and inlets off the Blackwater. In between are various boats that are obviously seaworthy and inhabited by a variety of interesting characters living 'off the grid'. The marsh samphire that was underfoot looked slightly different to the variety in the fishmongers but we took a few handfuls home and had it with fish - it was delicious.
Women On Top
As I’ve mentioned elsewhere I still get a buzz from seeing my pictures in print so it was extra gratifying to see today’s blanket coverage in the business press of Emma Walmsley’s appointment as CEO of GSK, as it was my image that was widely used to accompany it. Following some last minute and rather secretive enquiries over the weekend about my availability on Monday, I was finally briefed on Sunday afternoon and made my way to GSK HQ the following day still with no idea of exactly what I would be doing. Eventually I was shown into a boardroom and told I had an hour with Emma to come up with something good, which was the easy bit - the editing, choosing and final preparation took another four hours and I was eventually released back to the outside world in the early evening clutching a non-disclosure agreement and with a clear understanding that divulging this news or trying to buy GSK stock ahead of the announcement would be a very bad idea indeed. Many of the articles made the point that she is now one of only seven female CEOs of FTSE 100 companies - strangely enough, when I looked to see who the others were, I realised that I had photographed four of them; Emma, Dominique Laury at Kingfisher, Alison Cooper at Imperial Brands and Carolyn McCall at Easyjet. Perhaps I should write to the other three and see if I can finish the set……….
On The Beach
Portonovo, Marche, Italy. They do things very differently in Italy - the beach is crowded but very well organised - everyone has a lounger and an umbrella (at a price, obviously) and there are rather pretty changing cubicles and showers and, of course, a handful of decent restaurants for an obligatory slow lunch.
Guernsey Power Station
There is sometimes a curious beauty to industrial buildings that have been designed for utilitarian purposes with scant attention to aesthetics, particularly when the sun casts some strong shadows around rectilinear shapes - it's something I come back to time and again. One day I'll get it right.....
Llandudno
One of the pleasures of being despatched to various different locations around the country is occasionally ending up somewhere I've never been before, wouldn't necessarily have visited otherwise and which turns out to be rather fine. This weeks thousand mile jaunt through a dozen counties for a real estate investment trust took me through Llandudno, the 'Queen of the Welsh Resorts', with its magnificent Victorian pier. Simon Roberts, a photographer whose work I admire sufficiently to have bought two of his prints, photographed it from a different angle, as part of his excellent 'Pierdom' series.
Getty Center, Los Angeles
A handful of images I shot visiting the rather amazing Getty Center overlooking LA. In addition to its fabulous photography collection, it also contains several masterpiece paintings including one of Van Gogh's Irises, one of the most expensive paintings ever sold. Some years ago, I was working with a very wealthy businessman in the house that he used exclusively for his art collection and following his directions to the nearest lavatory, I found my myself in a small corridor face to face with a stunning painting of purple irises - the style seemed unmistakeable and returning to the kitchen I asked him "is that a Van Gogh down the hall?" to which he replied "aye, some museum in Germany just offered me three million quid for it...........I told 'em to get lost!"
Jellyfish
The trailing tentacles of a rather beautiful Purple Striped Jellyfish, Chrysaora colorata, at the Monterey Aquarium.
Venice, CA
1966 Marlin Fastback on the street near Venice Beach
Going Large
Two of the questions I'm most often asked are 'Who is the most famous person you've ever photographed?' and 'How big a print could you make from that camera?' I'm not entirely sure of the answer to the second one but here, looking rather good on the side of a building in Dusseldorf's exhibition centre is a banner of one of the portraits I recently shot around Europe for Fujifilm, measuring an impressive 4m x 3m. The answer to the first one is of course David Hasselhoff, who I photographed in London shortly after he single handedly ended the Cold War in 1989*, a legend whose stature could not possibly be done justice by a photo even this big........
*http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/berlin-wall-25th-anniversary-did-david-hasselhoff-really-help-rebuild-germany-1473553
Lawyers in Paris
Arriving in Paris with a brief to photograph two lawyers somewhere around their office, I wasn't expecting to find much in the way of interesting backgrounds and probably, as is often the case, to have to contrive something out of virtually nothing in a featureless meeting room so when I stepped into the top floor reception and spied an exit onto what appeared to be a roof terrace I wasted no time in asking my clients if it was possible to check it out. Slightly baffled by my request, as they regarded it merely as a smoking area, I was allowed out through the fire exit and immediately knew that one problem at least was solved although there was rather more wind than I had bargained for. Having set up my flash and weighted it down with a camera bag, I had to keep a nervous eye on it as it swayed alarmingly in the breeze above a six storey drop to the street while I picked the moments between gusts to try and catch the girls with at least most of their hair in the right place. Add a little of the effortless style and nonchalance for which Parisian women are so renowned, and the job was in the bag.
Speaking in Tongues, Playing with Light
This extraordinary painting entitled 'Speaking in Tongues' by Paul Benney was hanging in the South Transept of Chichester Cathedral where I was asked by an art PR company to shoot it before it moved on to to its next venue. Depicting the story of the Pentecost, where the apostles suddenly have a direct personal experience of God as 'tongues like of fire' descend and sit upon each of them, the work features the apostles beautifully rendered as characters who are all known to the artist. The problem was that, apart from the flames themselves, the whole painting is covered in a highly reflective lacquer with the idea that the viewer can see themselves reflected in it which meant that in all the photographs that had previously been taken, there were terrible reflections of the cathedral, the lighting and even the photographer. Add to that the very low light levels inside and you have a significant technical challenge. Having realised that my first idea of controlling the reflections with black drape was going to need about ten times more drape than I had with me, the solution was to light the work from both sides from just outside the reflected area without spilling any light back towards us and then to drop that in to a background mostly shot with the ambient light and a little extra fill on the back wall which, just to make life difficult, was also quite reflective. Having solved the technical problems we did several different versions and finally wrapped after about three hours just before the evensong deadline. For much of that time the soundtrack to our labours was the cathedral choir rehearsing in the Nave, which was very pleasant and I'm quite sure contributed to us all remaining calm under pressure and avoiding any unfortunate instances of stress induced profanity to which I am occasionally prone and which would have been more than usually inappropriate given the surroundings........
Beer Hero
When Beer magazine asked me to go and shoot a portrait of Dr Peter Darby, one of the world's foremost authorities on the cultivation and development of new hop varieties, on a hop farm in Kent in February, I was a little apprehensive as I knew it would be cold, probably wet and there would absolutely no hops to shoot him with. Although I was right on all three counts, I needn't have worried as the hop poles and wires made a very effective graphic background and he was kind enough to make us a cup of tea to warm up afterwards. As for the differences between hops of various nations, I'll simply quote Peter:
'English flavour is like a chamber orchestra, the hops giving simultaneously the high notes and the bass notes. In comparison, a Czech beer is more like a full orchestra with much more breadth to the sound, and an American hop gives more of a dance band with more emphasis on volume and brass. The recent New Zealand hops are like adding a voice to the instrumental music.' I couldn't have put it better myself.
Two Maestri
Despite their packed schedules, I managed to persuade two of the IMS maestri, Hariolf Schlichtig and Andràs Keller, to stand still long enough for a quick informal portrait session with their instruments. I hadn't quite worked out how I was going to get the piano into the shot with Tom Adès, but in the end he didn't have time so now I've got a few months to think about it...........
IMS
Every year in the Spring, some of the most promising young classical players from all over the world gather at a remote estate on the Cornish coast for a three week series of classes and coaching sessions with four or five of the acknowledged masters of their instruments. Despite the intense competition for a place, there is an extraordinarily friendly and special atmosphere and students and visitors are allowed to walk in and out of all the sessions at will. Photographically it is a real challenge. If the weather is bad, the light level in the rooms is both low and a difficult mixture of weak daylight from outside and low level tungsten light inside with the occasional energy saving bulb thrown in for good measure. If the weather is good, the rooms are flooded with brilliant sunlight.....from behind. The backgrounds are full of the clutter of a domestic interior and additionally of course, these are masterclasses with musicians of the highest calibre and the machine gun clatter of a Nikon shutter would be both immensely distracting and completely unacceptable. With all that in mind I decided to try out a Fuji XT-1 with its electronic, and therefore totally silent, shutter and put it through its paces - the results were exceptional. Mostly shot at 6400 ISO and given a black and white treatment to avoid the colour temperature issues, these images give a small insight into a unique environment that I was privileged to be allowed into for a couple of very memorable days.
Rain
The beginning of a shower of rain on Porlock beach in Somerset
Driving
Last week's drive around Germany, France, Belgium and Holland shooting some billboards for Fujifilm reminded me, after 3000Km and about 50 hours of driving, of the importance of a comfortable car and of two other long journeys I did in the very luxurious Lexus LS 400 - one to the Arctic Circle in Norway with James May (one of my favourite road trips ever) and another around the UK for this magazine feature. When I arrived to do this shoot at the bauxite plant, at Burntisland in Scotland, there was a gale force wind blowing in from the sea that meant it would have been impossible to keep the 5"x 4" plate camera I was using at the time still even on a heavy tripod, so I was forced to shoot from inside the doorway of a large shed on site and as the longest lens I had was equivalent to about a 70mm on an SLR, to make a much wider shot than I'd originally intended, resulting in a significantly stronger image than would otherwise have been the case. It was very well received by the client and I was quite happy to take the credit for an inspired choice of viewpoint.......
A Good Day at the Office
When one of London's top recruitment agencies wanted their key people photographed for a new website, they took my advice and asked my regular collaborator Anna Durston to do their hair and makeup - the results speak for themselves. All I had to do was add a little charm, point and shoot..........
The Utility of Shadows
I have visited hundreds of factories over the years and most of the successful ones end up bursting at the seams as they try and cope with increasing productivity in a fixed space. Good for business but usually bad for photography. Graphics Works in Milton Keynes was no exception, but Fujifilm wanted a double page image for their magazine, featuring MD Peter Barham with as many of the four large format Acuity printers that he'd bought from them, as possible. After a few minutes of trying various angles, it was obvious that only one was going to work and that I would have to settle for three out of four but as the initial test shot shows, it was still a mess and although some local tidying up was possible, none of the hardware was movable. So this was a perfect job for a technique I've used many times where essentially, I light what I want to see and let everything else disappear into the shadows. I started with my first light on Peter and from there it was just a question of positioning the other lights, hiding them wherever possible, controlling the quality, amount and direction of each one and building the image up, step by step.......plus a little polishing in Photoshop.
The Kew Brewery
There are apparently now over 1500 craft breweries in the UK and about 75 of these are in London, but as far as I know there is only one on the South Circular Rd in Sheen which was where I recently had the pleasure of meeting David Scott, who had given up a safe job in academia in order to start, along with his wife Rachel, the Kew Brewery. The problem was that the brewery wasn't even nearly finished, the builders were working on site, there was brewing kit, builders supplies and packaging everywhere and there was simply no possibility of shooting anything inside. Fortunately, it wasn't raining, so we retreated to the garage turned brewhouse at the rear of the site, set up the gear in the middle of the road and in keeping with the chaotic spirit of the shoot, left it all in frame.
