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.

Ice Cream Stop Motions

I was approached by Bath based creative agency Realityhouse to help them create some unique imagery for a rebrand that they were going through.

The brief was fairly wide open, almost anti agency. We decided to go down a route poking at other agencies and the bland way in which they present themselves. Sometimes it's really difficult to actually define what an agency actually do and Ant, the creative director was keen to move away from that and do something totally different. Hence the “Vanilla”  and “Look at me” stop motions.

Possibly a bold and risky move when sometimes clients like to know they are in safe and reliable hands, but it was a great idea to be brought in to work on.

And yes, we did actually make the lettering out of ice cream and shoot it all for real. That was the difficult part. Summer didn’t help our cause in some ways with this one, but we got the results all the same! Check them out below.

Troo Studio | Beautiful Handmade Furniture

I was asked to photography some beautiful handmade furniture made by Sam and Freya at Troo Studio. I was more than happy to help them out showing there pieces in there best light!

Zest Imgery

The guys at Stuff Advertising got in touch last year with a lovely little brief to shoot some food details for a client of theres. Of course I was delighted to help and here are some of the results.

Beasts Of Balance

The guys behind this new, cool game, Sensible Object came to me needing a hero imagery that was going to grace the box of the game as well as a set of other images that would form assets for other parts of the game packaging and marketing.

The brief was that they wanted to show what the game was about in one single image that would sit on the box. The game is played with a tablet, and the game pieces are stacked on the plinth until they eventually fall. A more modern and technical jenga. Maybe.

It seemed pretty obvious that we needed to show the tablet and then the stack falling as that would help encompass the game in a single image.

A super technical and fun couple of days in the studio and we managed to create a pretty killer image for the box alongside a full set of hero images of the characters in the game too.

Looking forward to hopefully seeing some of these boxes on toy shop shelves soon.

There are a few behind the scene's images from the shoot too!

Check out there website at www.beastsofbalance.com

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!

TRON

A Personal project using Perspex, mirrors, gelled lights and a precise placement of the lighting to create a series of images that reminded me of the film Tron. I coupled up complimentary colours to help the effect and to accent the refraction through the blocks.

3 days were spent in the studio creating the images. The perspex blocks had to all be as clean as possible, which is a difficult task within itself because of there static nature, and then arranged onto the mirrored surface to create the set. Lighting was then brought in with gels to show the refractive nature of the blocks. A timely, and pretty testing few days in the studio, but really pleased with the results.

Shouts must go out to Sophie Morrison (http://creativepool.com/SophieMorrison/projects) who retouched the images and added the final gloss to them!

GLITCH - AN EXPLORATION OF REFRACTION.

I recently had an idea about taking the conventional, painterly kind of still life stuff and trying to turn it on its head a little bit. Flowers have been painted and photographed for years. Karl Blossfeldt's early photographic studies of flowers and fauna stand out, but almost every photographer has done something with flowers along the way.

I wanted to try and see if I could do something a little different. Glitch like as it were. Perspex blocks make for a perfect way to achieve that as what they "see" on the ends can be pretty strange at time. 

A lot of careful placing and waving a tape measure around helped determine what would be seen through the blocks, here are some results. Retouched by Darek Szwedo (szwedo.co.uk).