There are easier ways into a safety deposit box vault than spending Easter weekend drilling through the wall like the Hatton Garden Gang, for example, you could go for a drink in the Revolution Bar in Leadenhall where they have one in the basement - sadly there are no valuables left in this one and all the boxes are empty but it's still protected by a mightily impressive door. The man in the frame is Rhydian Lewis, a former Lazards banker who co-founded the peer to peer lenders Ratesetter and wants you to get your money, should you have any to spare, out of your bank and give it to him in return for a much better interest rate. As usual there was a very limited time window, in this case two hours, to get in, light, shoot all the different options required and get out, but having recced the place the week before I had a good idea of how I was going to do it and fortunately, things went more or less to plan, with the added bonus of being able to go upstairs for a celebratory beer at the end........
Richard Cartwright, Wheelchair Rugby Player
Richard Cartwright is a founder member of the Solent Sharks Wheelchair Rugby Team and also a lecturer in Accountancy at Southampton University. I managed to get him into a side room at the Stoke Mandeville Stadium one Saturday in between games for just about long enough to make a decent portrait for Economia Magazine before he headed back out onto the courts to rejoin the fray. The sport combines elements of Rugby, Handball and Basketball and is played with a degree of physical commitment that completely surprised me, with rapid bursts of acceleration, pirouette turns, some amazingly deft manoeuvring at speed, and head-on collisions in defence frequently leading to overturned wheelchairs. Richard is actually a lot more friendly than he looks.......
The Living and the Dead
I spent a day recently on the set of the forthcoming BBC supernatural drama The Living and the Dead and was asked to shoot a quick portrait of actress Fiona O'Shaughnessy for use as a prop later in the series. Searching around upstairs in Horton Court in Gloucestershire, a cold, creepy and mysterious National Trust property where much of the filming was taking place, and the crew have experienced several strange and inexplicable occurrences, I found a stretch of unfinished plaster wall for a backdrop and using a builder's site lamp for illumination, was testing the shot when I heard the assistant director call for silence downstairs on set. I stood still and waited for them to complete and to my surprise heard an old fashioned phone ring midway through the take. I assumed it was a sound effect and part of the story but afterwards I found out that it had been the remote bell for the house phone which had rung for no apparent reason - according to the guardians on site, the phone line had been disconnected over a decade ago.......
Paris
Anyone who has ever waited for the lift at Russell Square tube station will probably have contemplated climbing the two hundred or so stairs to ground level instead but it's not for the faint hearted. No such dilemma in Paris this week where, with an hour to kill before heading to the airport and having walked the short distance from the client's office to the Arc de Triomphe, I found the lift out of action and the only way to join the tourists for a view of Paris at dusk was to climb the two hundred and eighty four steps to the top from where the Eiffel Tower looked as magnificent as ever.
Cornwall
From a walk through the magnificent ancient woods of the Trelowarren Estate in Cornwall at the end of the summer
The Krays
Recent publicity for the new movie about the Krays reminded me of this shoot for 442 in 1997. Lennon and Izzet were both playing for Leicester City at the time and on account of them always being together, as opposed to any suggestion of their ruthlessness on the pitch, they were humorously nicknamed "The Krays" by their team mates. Borrowing Bailey's sixties shot of the infamous gangsters for inspiration, I asked them to look 'hard' but it was quite an effort as they were both naturally more inclined to levity than menace. The original image was a black and white lith print from a medium format negative which gave an effect that I still love and have yet to find a way of replicating properly with a digital image.
Steve Curtis, Powerboat Racer
Sometimes I think I have a rather unusual job......until I meet someone like Steve Curtis, current and eight times Class 1 Offshore Powerboat Champion whose job as one of the worlds best throttlemen, is to control the speed of a five tonne boat worth half a million pounds, skimming the surface of the sea at 160mph. In 1993 he survived a catastrophic accident in the Mediterranean and managed to swim to the shore while the rescue teams, finding no body at the crash site, presumed him dead. When he casually mentioned that eight of his friends had been killed in the sport, not being a very good swimmer I decided to stick with photography for the time being....
Cider Makers of East Anglia
Robbie Crone, Charles Roberts and Tony Hobbs sampling Charles' Pickled Pig cider in Cambridgeshire. I abstained until later on at home, remembering that I had once tried some 'gas and air' pain relief on a shoot in a maternity unit in Glasgow and got halfway back to London before I realised that I'd left my tripod behind.........
London Air Ambulance
The problem with photographing an emergency response vehicle is that you can never be quite sure whether it will be there when you need it. This was my second visit to the London Air Ambulance - the first time, it had left for an emergency repair ten minutes before I arrived. This time I made it all the way up to the command centre at the top of the Royal London Hospital and was just starting to discuss my ideas for the shoot when, having been silent all morning, the alarm went off and the helicopter was scrambled - the timing was almost comical. Forty five minutes later, having successfully rescued a critically injured horse rider from West London, it was back.....but only for fifteen minutes before flying off again for refuelling, so once again I had a tiny window of opportunity to get the job done. This is why sensible photographers stay in the studio and shoot still life........the view from the helipad, however, was spectacular.
Hull
I wish I'd taken some nice pictures of the old town in Hull, as it's a place of some charm, and undeserving of its reputation as one of Britain's Crap Towns, but I didn't, I took pictures of mud instead and then went for a pint in a lovely little pub called Wm Hawkes' Alehouse. Half an hour later, as I crossed the swing bridge a hundred yards farther downstream from where I shot this, a woman and two dogwalkers were talking a suicidal man out of jumping into the River Hull - I didn't photograph that either. A strange day......
Alderney Tourism
Having battled indifferent weather and a strong, cold easterly wind for two days, shooting some lifestyle and tourism images on the Channel Island of Alderney, we ended up on the beach near Fort Clonque for a sunset shoot with local businessman Paul and his fiancée Claudette. Paul's son had come along for the ride and as we packed up they both wandered off to try and climb on to a rock that was still surrounded by the high tide, finally catching a break between the waves to clamber on. Mission accomplished they just stood there for a minute or two watching the sunset and talking as I rushed back to grab a few frames before they jumped off. Sometimes the best moments are completely unplanned.....
Excavator Buckets, St Sampson, Guernsey
Piled up in the corner of a yard at one of Guernsey Electricity's generator plants, the rusting steel in the warm afternoon light caught my eye as I wandered about killing time, waiting to shoot a portrait of the manager for an engineering firm's ad campaign..........
Turbo - Hamburg
The rather beautiful hot side of a large marine turbo - sad that such an elegant device spends its working life out of sight on the back of an exhaust manifold at 400℃
MSC Oscar
Spent a couple of frustrating days in Germany last week trying to shoot the MSC Oscar, the largest container ship in the world, for the Swiss engineering company ABB who make the turbochargers that keep many of these leviathans on the move, before finally getting the shot we wanted.........in Felixstowe.
Freight Terminal, Jadeweseport
Oddly enough, two weeks after looking out to sea in Essex I found myself exactly the other side of the Channel near Wilhelmshaven in Germany......with some time to kill
Bradwell on Sea, Essex
Low tide, looking east across the remains of the 7th century fish traps. Nothing between me and Holland except a wind farm.......
Pappardelle
Home made pappardelle drying in the kitchen - I love making pasta, it's dead easy and everyone thinks you're a genius. If only I could say the same of photography.
Economia
A nice cover and DPS in this month's Economia - the fruits of our rather stressful shoot described in the interview on Jan 9th. In the end of course, the only thing anyone remembers is whether or not the pictures were any good...........
Cats
When it was announced that Cats would be returning to the London stage and that the original team, Trevor Nunn, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Gillian Lynne and John Napier would be back together again after 34 years, The Really Useful Group asked me to do a portrait of them all in situ at the Palladium. It's usually a nightmare working in a theatre - no lights, no power, dozens of technicians and cast all trying get things done and a fifteen minute window during a tea break to get your shot and this was no exception, but I still get a buzz from being behind the scenes at one of these venues. Cats has been running continuously, somewhere on earth, since 1981 - four years longer than I've been working..........
Planes, Trains Etc
Jamie Foster is the procurement director for Hitachi Rail and here he is being very good humoured about standing about in the cold at the draughty end of Platform 14 at St Pancras recently for a magazine shoot. Here's three facts about Hitachi. The name is derived from the Japanese for Sun (Hi) and Rise (Tachi). They are a multinational conglomerate with a turnover of around £60Bn. In addition to rather swish trains, they also manufacture the world's best selling vibrator. Not a lot of people know that......
