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.
Bank Vault
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
