Coca Cola Signature Mixers

At the start of the year I took some time to scratch my head and think about doing something that I had wanted to do most of the previous year, but not really found the time.

Most of the liquids that I had shot that year previous had been contained and predictable. What I mean by that was either in a bottle or a glass, behaving as you would expect in a bottle or a glass. Freezing liquids is much more difficult than you would probably think, Limitations on equipment is usually the biggest hurdle. I’d been freezing people pouring drinks for now so I wanted to try and take it up a notch, both technically and creatively. I like a challenge.

I’d had the Coca Cola Signature Mixers in the studio for a while waiting for me to pull my finger out. The original idea was to take each flavouring and look at the ingredients and use those as the elements around the bottles. Saying that, some of the ingredients weren’t that easy to get hold of and it would mean that each bottle would always sit on its own because of the limitations with the ingredients.

Fast froward some days of thinking, planning and shooting and we had the elements needed to create the final image. Ben Allen (https://benallendigital.com/) retoucher extraordinaire/ wizard put all of the assets together seamlessly, and here we have the final images.

The shoot gave us a total of 5 assets, the main image which the angles and composition were set in the camera, gripped in cleverly. Splashes were then shot against a blank bottle and then individually to create enough assets to fill the gaps. You can see part of the retouch process below, with some of the asset images and the final stills too!

So here are a selection of some of the frames that went together to create the final image. It got pretty messy in the studio, but definitely worth doing I think!!

If you’d like to see some more behind the scenes features over the course of the year - stay tuned! Throughout some of our more exciting projects I’ll snap some behind the scenes images and video for you to see how some of the images were created!

Drinks photography for Louis Roederer with Philippe Starck.

Back in the autumn last year we were asked to shoot the exclusive UK release of a collaboration between Louis Roederer and French designer Philippe Starck. Brut Nature 2012 was a continuation of a collaboration between the Champagne house and the designer which started some years previous.

The release was exclusive to the Beaufort Bar at The Savoy Hotel, London for a month prior to general sale in the UK, so what better location to shoot it in! I’ve shot in the Beaufort Bar before, its a really stunning venue, But it does provide some challenges to shooting in there as its a contrast of black walls, gold detailing and mirrors.

We spent the day creating key visuals for both the Blanc and Rose variations that set the bottle in the beautiful setting of the bar. Turns out that there 244 year history, Louis Roederer have never used a British photographer either for any of the imagery they have had produced, so that felt quiet special too!

Hope you enjoy the images as much as we did shooting them (and testing the product!).

Festive Drinks Photography

Last summer we built some sets in the studio and shot some festive drinks, perfect for celebrations, and warming moments of reflection. Here is just a few of the images, getting in close too for some great details!

Baileys Cinnamon Spice

For two servings, you will need:

• 50ml Baileys® Original Irish Cream Liqueur

• 40ml Smirnoff® Vanilla Flavoured Vodka

• 240ml Milk

• 2 Cinnamon Sticks

• 1 generous pinch of Cinnamon

Equipment:

• 2x Martini glass

• 1 x Strainer

• 1 x Jigger

• 1 x Cocktail Shaker

Method:

1. Fill a shaker with ice.

2. Add Baileys Original Irish Cream Liqueur, Smirnoff Vanilla Vodka and milk to the shaker.

3. Shake until cold.

4. Strain into a glass.

5. Garnish with cinnamon powder and a cinnamon stick and serve.

Hot Toddy

For two servings you will need:

• 50ml Whiskey

• 3 tsp of good quality Honey

• 1 Cinnamon Stick, snapped in half

• 1 Lemon, half juiced and half sliced

• A couple of cloves

Equipment:

• 2x heatproof glasses

• Teaspoon for stirring

• Lemon juicer

Method:

1. Stir the whisky and honey together and split between 2 heatproof glasses. Add half of the cinnamon stick to each, then top up with 200ml boiling water.

2. Add a splash of lemon juice to each, then taste and add more to your preference. Finish each with a slice of lemon, studded with a clove, and serve immediately.

Gin Daisy (traditionally a Sea Breeze)

For two servings you will need:

• 75ml Gin

• Juice of half a lemon

• 2 teaspoons of sugar

• A dash of grenadine

Equipment:

• 1x Cocktail Shaker

• 2x Old fashioned, or stemmed cocktail glasses

Method:

1. In a shaker filled halfway with ice cubes combine the gin, lemon juice, sugar and grenadine.

2. Shake well until combined and chilled and serve in your glass of choice.

Old Fashioned

For each serving you will need:

• 50ml Bourbon or Rye Whisky

• 1x brown sugar cube (traditional) or 1 tsp of simple syrup

• 2 or 3 dashes of Angostura bitters

• 1x orange for peel

• Large cube(s) of ice

Equipment:

• Muddler

• Bar Spoon

• Peeler

• Old Fashioned Glass

Method:

1. Place the sugar cube at the bottom of an old-fashioned glass.

2. Saturate the cube with bitters and muddle.

3. Add the whiskey and stir well.

4. Drop in the ice and stir the liquid through well, until the ice starts to give and melt.

5. Take a slice of orange peel for garnish. You can squeeze to release the oils if desired.

Kir Royale

For two servings you will need:

• Creme de Cassis

• Champagne

• Fresh or frozen Blackberries

Equipment:

• Two champagne flutes or saucers

• Martini picks (optional)

Method:

1. Pour roughly 1 tsp of the crème de cassis into the bottom of a champagne flute.

2. Top up with Champagne

3. Add a blackberry as garnish, you can skewer one onto the martini pick too and rest across the glass if desired.

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Looking forward to shooting more like this throughout 2020 - I might even shoot some more myself and put a little book of festive flavours together in time for next Christmas. Maybe…

I’d love to work on loads more drinks based stuff this year, so if you have a project that might suit, give me a shout - I’d love to work together!

2019; A Festive Year.

2019 has been a great year, and, throughout the year, right up until late October Christmas shoots have been coming in! Those of you who follow me on Instagram will have seen my Christmas Advent, head on over to see a few more images there than the few selected here. (it was at the top of my feed throughout December)

It’s time to sit back and enjoy Christmas itself, but here are a few of my favourite Christmas images from this year, for a variety of clients. There was plenty of variety with the subject matter too, food, drinks and some proper still life stuff with perfume and ice skates for a couple of other campaigns. I hope you enjoy looking through them as much as I did making them.

Cheers from myself and the crew. Here’s to 2020! (we’re looking forward to getting started on shooting Christmas imagery throughout the year for next Christmas! Sorry for wishing the year away!)

Christmas Campaign for Cribbs Causeway

Christmas Campaign for Cribbs Causeway

Christmas Campaign for Cribbs Causeway

Christmas at The Savoy

Christmas at The Savoy

Christmas at The Savoy

The Perfume Shop gifting guide

The Perfume Shop gifting guide

Sofitel St James

Sofitel St James

Shloer

Shloer

Shloer

And of course, some personal work, all based around the Christmas period…

Beyond The Bean; Summer Drinks Photography

Back at the start of the year we were asked to shoot a range of lovely drinks for Beyond the Bean and the summer drinks range they have been perfecting. 3 days, lot’s of studio based sun and some vibrant colours make some a super summery brochure! We even made a few little things move whilst we were at it!

Lots of drinks perfect for those summer days!

Looking forward to hopefully shooting a moodier winter edition sometime this summer!

Drinks Photography for the Beaufort Bar at The Savoy

I recently shot a selection of drinks for the Beaufort Bar at The Savoy in London. Such an elegant location, and amazing looking drinks made for a beautiful set of images. My personal favourite was the cocktail specially crafter for the BAFTAs, elegant coupe glass decorated with a blue glaze and a shard of glass like ice placed in the top. Beautiful.

Looking forward to the next time I’m in London shooting cocktails!

Knights Bar Autumn Allotment Cocktails

The Savoy asked me to shoot a range of the seasonal cocktails served up in the Knights Bar which is a part of the Simpsons 1828 Restaurant at The Savoy. Located on the Strand in central London, the Knights Bar is tucked away from the hustle and bustle of the street below, offering a relaxing environment to indulge in a cocktail or two prior to a luxurious meal, or they’re happy to just serve drinks. The greatest shame is that I’ve always got to drive after photographing them!

These cocktails were inspired by English allotment flavours and they looked great with such vibrant colours.

Remembering Summer

Winter can be all a little bit gloomy, especially once the Christmas and New Year festivities have been and gone. Going to work in the dark, going home in the dark. Especially after the great summer we had in 2018. Football, beer and lots of BBQ’s. Well, not all beer - so I shot a few of my favourite summer drinks to get us looking forward to the longer warmer days again.

Aperol Spritz. A summer classic.

Ophir Gin, tonic with lime and ginger.

Gin and tonic, with Elderflower and cucumber.

Wolfburn Whisky

I was recently commissioned by Wolfburn Distillery to photograph the range of Scottish Whiskys they produce. Simple and effective product photography is a great investment. With the assests that I shot for them they can now provide suppliers and distributors with great imagery too which will make the products stand out in a market busy with competitors.

I’m glad to say that they’re really happy with the results from the shoot, I’m looking forward to working with them again in the not to distant future on some more great projects! Hopefully we can get up to the distillery and do some stuff on location!!

Brandy Snaps

As things wound down for Christmas and seeing in the new year, I found some time to mess around with some Brandy. Fitting for the season! Enjoy!

Pour us A Double

Here are a couple of test images from over the summer months when I decided to shoot some Whisky. Both based around a pour, one a more clean cut studio image, and then the other a more lifestyle based image.

Both came with some challenges, the pour into the glass being the most difficult. Getting the pour to meet the glass in the exact spot I wanted proved testing, but with some patience and persistence we got there in the end. Thats what still life imagery is all about!!

Throwing It Together

When I was younger, I remember my mum saying things like "I've just thrown a cake together." I'm not sure what it was that jogged my memory about that, but it got me thinking about how that could be bought to life in a visual way. Maybe I should have started with throwing a cake together, or, maybe thats something for another time. I thought about the idea for a few weeks and then threw myself into it. 

After I'd sat on the idea for a bit, in December 2017 I started to shoot what would turn out to be a long and testing body of personal work.

Starting with breakfast. A full English to be exact. This image would set the framework for the project and how I would execute more of these thrown together images. The trouble was, at this point I wasn't sure how many I wanted to do, or what was going to be next. Things seem to work nicely in three's, but I've got a bit of a habit of shooting series of work that always come out with three final images so I wanted to go further with it than that.

The first image took me two days to shoot. There was a lot of tinkering as you can imagine, but I wanted to make sure that this could be an elaborate and real talking point within my portfolio. As is always the way with the first step of a series or new body of work, you have to find the best ways of doing things. A bit of trail and error, probably lots of swearing as things didn't quiet work out and a bunch of patience goes a long way with this kind of thing. Everything had to be shot near enough where it is positioned in the frame in the final image. Perspectively things wouldn't line up otherwise, something might just look odd about the images, but it would be difficult for the viewer to figure out what if they weren't "visually trained". It was the perfect challenge for me, offered up plenty of problems to solve, which in turn appeals to my precise way of doing things. I guess thats what really makes still life photographers tick.

I can't remember which image I shot next, but after doing so it started to become clear to me that I could do a whole days worth of food. Maybe an indulgent day, but that seemed like a logical way to go with and it would give me a natural order for the images. Now not only did I want to do the dishes, but I wanted to throw in a drink for each stage too. This obviously started with the brew on the breakfast which I didn't really have to think about with a fry up, the rest went from there.

After about 6 months I'd ended up with the images you see below. A little bit of an epic, but worth all the tinkering and eating all the food afterwards!

Sometimes the best work just seems to grow organically.

Full English Breakfast

Smoothie

Cheese Toastie with Tomato Soup (very American)

Surf and Turf

Trifle

Cheese and Biscuits.

Drinks For The Savoy

Recently we've been shooting some drinks work for the Savoy. Using the Kinghts Bar which is located above Simpsons Restaurant and looks out onto the Strand. The bar has a Art Deco feel to it and they serve a host of there own signature cocktails such as "Put the Kettle on" inspired by tea and "Don't make a fuss" where the glass has a lipstick lips style glaze added.

Looking back at 2017 and forward to 2018.

2017 was a great year. I was lucky enough to work with some great people and some pretty awesome projects throughout the year. So thank you to everyone who put there trust in me to get the job done! Here are a few little personal highlights from the year, sorry I can't put everything up here, theres just way to much of it and you'd still be looking at this in March.

Better By Bike.

I was commissioned at the start of the year to shoot a campaign for, Bath, Bristol and North Somerset councils for their Better by Bike initiative, the council want to get people to commute to work using cycle paths in the area and its also a great way of keeping fit. Picking up with a similar feel to how we shot for them last time back in 2015, 6 days on location was a fairly chunky project, the weather was mostly kind to us too which is a bonus!

Burts Chips

It was a bit of a strange job when I was approached about shooting some cocktails that were inspired by flavours of crisps for Burts Chips. Even stranger was a Martini with cheese instead of an olive but anything goes in the 21st centuary. We shot them on location in Bristol and there was lots of product on set, which is only a good thing. Super fun job and all of the cocktails looked stunning.

Personal Work

I was lucky enough to find a bit of time to shoot some personal work and tinker on things. Much of 2017 was about drinks on a personal level. I love how technical you can get with these images, spending time refining the lighting and then once the drink is poured it's all done in a matter of seconds. Different story with the bottle images however where you can tinker for an age... Love shooting this kind of thing and want to do lots more so if you've just rebranded something liquid/ booze based, lets talk about creating some awesome imagery for it.

Reach Robotics: MEKAMON

I shot product, lifestyle and campaign images for Reach Robotics new augmented reality based product MEKAMON. These are now available from the apple stores.

Winkworth Sherwood

I spent 3 days in Winkworth Sherwood's office on the bank of the Thames shooting portraits of fee earners for the rebrand. Art Direction wise we wanted it to feel editorial, New York Times kind of relaxed interview. I think we managed that despite spending only a short amount of time with each sitter. Always a pleasure to work with art director Anthony Mullinder.

Strasbourg Christmas Markets

I was commissioned to shoot a large scale paper model of Strasbourg, created by the super talented Sam Pierpoint. It came in at something like 1.6m x 1.6m, pretty big for something so delicate. A whole lot of patience and skill had gone into crafting it. A day in the studio to assemble the model and then a day of shooting all the elements to bring the city to life. There's also a version where the smoke moves and shooting stars ping across the sky. The model is now actually in Strasbourg for all to see and scratch their heads about how it's all put together. Loved this one - heaps more of this kind of thing please!

The Gift Of Cake

The Gift of Cake is a brilliant start up based in the South West. Send cake to loved ones to say a little something, instead of the predictable flowers. There was an awful lot of cake on this shoot, I tired it all and it was all delicious! Very much looking forward to working with their team on some more of this next year as they produce seasonal ideas. Check out there website, all the photography work on there is from yours truly. www.thegiftogcake.com

The Savoy

I've been lucky enough to start shooting for The Savoy. These drinks were shot over a couple of occasions in the Knights bar, which is part of Simpson's In The Strand restaurant. I'm looking forward to going back this year and shooting some new signature cocktails that they may have up their sleeves. Back in 2017, The American Bar, which is part of the Savoy won the coveted title of best bar in the world. A little goal for myself this year is to try and shoot some cocktails for them too! Though the greatest shame is that every time I've been driving, so I can't even sample these...

Its been a hectic and colourful year. Again, thanks for the love and trust. Can't wait to work with you all in 2018. Lets make it even better, brighter and crazier than the year just passed.

Moor Beer

Myself and Braddan at Skylark agency recently got together to shoot for Bristol based beer powerhouse, Moor Beer.

We wanted to give each beer it's own distinctive 'location' to help show the variety of beers that Moor brew. We chose a select few beers that showed the range of beers that Moor produce and varied up the environments that we shot them in. A mix of pale ales, IPA's and stout was a concise enough selection to show just a snippet of the 22 beers that they offer.

We changed each set as well each glass used to help distinguish the beer's differences.

Each beer was carefully lit with a stunt glass until I was happy with my overall lighting. Once we were there with the lighting it was time for a few little tricks to get our hero beers ready whilst in situ.

Here are some of my personal favourites.

2016: A Year in Review

2016 has been a year of highs and lows. A strange year. One to remember for many reasons, but also one to forget for a variety of things too.

Looking back at the year at the photographic highlights of the year as we prepare to move into 2017. Hope you enjoy looking back as much as I have.

Excited to see what the new years going to hold for us all!