During my recent shoot producing photography for the Natural History Museum’s annual review, I had the privileged experience of photographing the amazing work done by the conservation team in the Darwin Centre, on the skeleton of the Blue Whale, the museum’s largest specimen.
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“Message from the Unseen World” is a digital art installation memorial wall dedicated to mathematician Alan Turing.
Located in Paddington West London, It celebrates the life and work of Alan Turing who was born in Paddington and is best known for the role he played in breaking the enigma code during the second world war.
The piece was curated by Futurecity and devised by United Visual Artists (“UVA”) in collaboration with Hackney based poet Nick Drake. Nick Drakes verse depicts Turing speaking posthumously about his life.
The installation comprises aluminium panels perforated by holes and LED’s which display extracts from Turing’s ground breaking “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” in patterns based on the Baudot code.
As the LED’s are illuminated they reveal words and verses from Drakes poem, with the display controlled by an algorithm which experiments with different combinations of letters and words.
Aerial shoot this year for Fred Olsen Cruise Lines, photographing “Boudicca” up in Scotland.
Glass Mill centre is a new leisure facility in lewisham South London. Created with a kinetic glass facade designed by artist Phil Coy. A palette of 1,800 glass pixels form a multicoloured grid across the vast curved facade of the building. The grid is backlit, fitted with sensors which through computer programming, respond to the level of external sound around from traffic noise to human voice’s. Glass Mill won best Built Project-community scale in 2014 for “it’s transformational impact on the wider area, benefits to the local community, design and ingenuity”
Norway aerial photography for Fred Olsen Cruise Lines. Following the success of the last shoot on board the Braemar for Fred Olsen, this was a new commission for an aerial shoot of the cruise liner Braemar in Norway.
With a schedule in place, myself, client Mike Bird, and producer Jeremy Bates, travelled to Bergen then onward by car to Flam Fjord, to meet the ship which was due to arrive at dawn the next day.
Following on from the Brooklands book project, four images from the series were selected to be included in this years Creative Review photography Annual.
The Brooklands centenary book project that took me almost a year to complete, but was one of the most rewarding I’ve ever done!
–more–>The commission came from a Design Group, and involved photographing almost the entire historic motor and aircraft collection of Brooklands Museum in Surrey.
Brooklands was celebrating it’s Centenary year, and the brief for me was to produce the photography for a book in commemoration of it’s famous history.
Brooklands is home to the worlds first purpose built motor racing track. During the early part of the century, especially through the twenties and thirties, many world land speed records were achieved by cars and motor cycles connected with Brooklands.It became the birthplace of British aviation and motor sport, with legendary drivers and motor cycle riders competing in races each week. All racing stopped at the outbreak of the second World War and aircraft development took over, the Hurricane being just one. It was also home to inventor, Barnes Wallis, who famously developed the bouncing bomb as well as designing many famous aircraft of the period as well. In later years, Brooklands played a major part in the development of Concorde’s engines. The collection consist’s only of car’s, motorcycles, and aircraft that have a direct historic link to Brooklands.
When I visited for the first time to see what was involved I was amazed by the sheer size and scale of the collection. A lot of the vehicles and motor cycles were displayed very close to each other, with backgrounds that I thought would confuse the main subject, plus I had to work around members of the public.
So I decided to use heavy black velvet material to lay on the floor and to hang behind, essentially I wanted to black everything out around each car and motorcycle, this way I could highlight the bodywork and detailing on everything. The effect worked very well with some added post production.
The aircraft were a different matter, some were situated in the main aircraft hanger, now a listed building, but with this amazing structure as a backdrop I was able to create some really interesting imagery of the bigger aircraft.
More full size aircraft are exhibited outside, including Concorde, so I had to cover these as well, trying to keep the same visually strong graphic style I’d created for the other smaller subjects.
I spent a long period of time working on the project, so I got to know all the volunteers that look after the collection. They helped me an enormous amount to get the project completed.These are just a few of the pictures as well as some of the others on the main website.
Finished book,“100 years of Brooklands” published by Touchstone Books
Brooklands Museum Surrey
A new commission to photograph world renowned British Sculptor, George Cutts in his Sussex studio.
Famous for his complex work in stainless steel and the first sculptor in the world to combine this material with stone, his sculptures have been commissioned in countries all over the world.
Orient Express train Switzerland….
Another commission from Orient Express Hotels Train & Cruises, my brief this time was to photograph the Orient Express train on it’s route through Switzerland.
Eastern oriental Express train photographed en route through Thailand.
I’d already produced a major advertising lifestyle shoot on board the E&O train. So I was very familiar with the train and it’s route, as I’d made the complete journey on board from Bangkok through Thailand, finally ending in Singapore. So busy and complex was the shoot on board the train, we never got the chance to capture major pictures of it in the landscape.
