BorehamBlog

These shots taken at the launch party for the spiffing new Samsung Z5 mp3 player, out to beat Apple at their own game. It has a shiny black aluminium body with a touch sensitive control panel. Seemed to go down well with both the journo’s and the busty showgirls (also with shiny black aluminium bodies) brought in to add a bit of glamour to the event at M1NT, a posh bar in Sloane Street that served rather fine asparugus wrapped in palma ham and totally disgusting pomegranite slugs.

Like busses, my blog entries come along all at once. Its been a busy couple of weeks with a lot of shooting at night - a bit of a theme really. You can hide ugly things and the weather does not much matter for night photography and as there is so much night available at this time of year it seems an obvious choice.

This shoot was for Meica who do heating and lighting. The above job was the redevelopment of a warehouse complex into arty studio type offices. Some great ceilings from the old warehouse roofs.

Off to Liverpool yesterday to photograph part of a project called ATLAS. To cut a long story short, its a massive particle accelerator that some pople have been working on for 20 years that is going to be buried in the ground in Geneva and record particle collisions at speeds never before undertaken. The data amassed each day will fill a mile high stack on un-boxed CD’s and from this we will be able to discover the meaning of life.

The whole project is actually an attempt to find dark matter. There is a big hole (a black hole!?) in the most popular model of how the ‘big bang’ happened, seeing as how the sums don’t add up properly. To make them work, scientists have invented a particle, so called ‘God Particle’ that if it exists will make all things lovely and bring world peace amongst the scientific community. This project is an attempt to find the particle. If it does not exist then they will have to think again, probably quite hard, but I was told they are fairly confident on finding out something interesting whatever happens.

In my experience, one does not need the $4 billion that this project has cost to find God, but what do I know? Regardless, its all very interesting and what I did discover is that we only know about 6% of the properties of the universe and that, in the words of the leading professor on this project, is not very much at all. So, to those of you who are concerned or even relieved that Science has Disproved God - don’t be so sure!

Mexican chicken, popcorn chicken, corn beef hash, pork and apple Rostis, southern fried Poppas – the list is endless, or so it seems at the moment whilst we are still shooting and I’ve been at it for 6 hours. Still, you get to eat the leftovers which is great.

I’m working for Imagefarm, a company where an mate of mine, Brian Benford, is the food designer and product ‘initiator’. He and his wife Angela have come up with some brilliant ideas.

I was amazed when they showed me the food production. Here wheelie-bins full of chicken frozen chicken from Thailand or fresh chicken from Holland are processed with industrial efficiency using such equipment as ‘blast freezers’ - rooms bigger than our living space that run at minus 40 degrees centigrade. The final products look like they have been lovingly handcrafted by your granny in Devon but are in fact turned out in batches if 10,000 by Brian and his co-workers on an industrial estate in Wembley at incredibly low price points.

I spent the moring on Wednesday in a plumbing emporium. Not handling the taps and turning the valves but shooting the new MD and some of his water retaining produce.

Much of this was done with my www.Lumedyne.com  battery lights that I love and have revolutionised my work. Tons of power- anywhere you want it. So I was able to get studio quality lighting in the rainy car park in Woolwich.

The hairy fella making a furtive exit clutching a shower head is me, snapped by the store mamager who had already been in too many pictures himself. Must get a haircut… and some better trousers..and some new shoes….

This was another fun shoot - pictures of all the spokespeople from an international IT company. A great location with lots of places to use as backgounds and lots of natural light- it makes life easier for both the shooter and the subject.

I love this kind of work - a chance to talk to people and find out what makes them tick. The guy bottom right lives round the corner from Hugo and Sharon who run the charity I work with in Africa, and knew them quite well. How bizarre is that!?

Friday was Fun. Went into London to shoot corporate portraits for the new MD of a pretty major diamond trading company (there is a clue there for the nosey).

Lots of security and a right struggle trying to get in - we were given just a small time slot to get a selection of shots. It went every well and despite the rushing around and an acknowledged hatred of having her photograph taken, the MD had a good time and we got some great shots. Here she is holding what I estimate to be about $12million worth of rough diamonds. No wonder the security people were keen to keep a close eye as we shuffled them around for the photo…

The, later that day I was shooting likkle girls for simply perfect - company who sell communion dress How sweet. Variety is the spice of life they say…