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.
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
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.
GKN Global annual report
The brief was to shoot a series of very graphic black & white shots at some of GKN’s multinational global businesses. The schedule for the shoot meant shooting in locations not only around England but France, Germany and America too. The subjects were all heavy industrial and extremely complex. This meant a lot of pre planning and a great deal of travelling to complete all the locations and subjects the client required. Continue…
Graphis book Icelandic landscape selected for inclusion
One of the landscape shots from my shoot in Iceland that has been selected for inclusion into another edition of the Graphis Photography book.
This particular shot is of the Svartsengi Geothermal power station at the Blue lagoon.
The Blue Lagoon
Developing creative style
A second Rotovision book project again with writer Terry hope. This one on Architecture, developing style in creative photography, using my award winning landscape series on Bodie a ghost town in California as examples.
I’ve written about the way I compose, my technique & the way I work with light.
Developing creative style
Composition.
I was contacted by writer Terry Hope who told me he had seen the black & white portraiture series I’d done of americans which had been selected for inclusion in the Association of Photographers awards. He was busy writing a photographic book about composition for publishers Rotovision and really wanted to include my shots in the forth coming book.
Portrait Ron Bambridge composition
Californian ghost town of Bodie.
I entered images from my recent Californian shoot around Gold rush country into the 15th Association Awards.
An assignment for English Heritage annual report, designed by Wordsearch, had me producing a series of images to show some of their substantial regeneration and rebuilding projects around the country. I met some fascinating people during the shoot and discovered some amazing architecture. I also got an insight into the work that EH do. Just three pictures shown here. First one is the incredible interior of Wiltons Music Hall built in 1850. Discreetly tucked away in a quiet East London street the entrance is hardly noticeable, but once inside, the stunning interior of the worlds oldest music halls is revealed.
