Blondie @ Kenwood and other “oldies”

Firstly, I apologise for the the word “oldies”…

Saturday afternoon was spent traveling in the heat by train, tube and bus to Kenwood house; a place that I have many fond memories of. I was born just up the road and I remember Sunday mornings, walking down the shaded paths feeding the squirrels ending up at the coach house for tea and cake….

So, Saturday… I arrived early with the hope of taking a set of “feature” shots, maybe talking to a few of the audience. However, upon arrival we were kept waiting for over an hour for our passes, gaining entry minutes before the support act (Little Fish).


I had traveled with the expectation (and hence preparation) of shooting Blondie from in front of the stage. Upon arrival we found this was not the case and they wanted us to shoot from the rear (a really long way way!). Had I known this, I would not have travelled. So what do I do? Walking round it was obvious that there were plenty of audience members with decent cameras. I am not traveling for 4.5 hours, leaving my family having a barbecue in wonderful sunshine to not get the images I am commissioned to get…

Sunday was the O2. Michael MacDonald was easy to shoot, if not a little un-intresting due to sitting behind a keyboard (he sounded great though)..


For me though, my shot of the weekend was soul legend Al Green enjoying the sweet sounds of the sax……

A mixed bag..

The last couple of weeks really has been that – a mixed bag. This always give me a problem of what to blog, when and how.

I like this blog to reflect me, the shots from that I feel are more me than the run of the mill press shots I deliver. For example, I have made it clear so many times that I love working in black and white, i love informal portraits but these just do not sell for the kind of events I cover.

Take last night, at the Shepherds Bush Empire, we had Charlotte Gainsbourg. Very photogenic, the lighting was quite moody and with her gazing off into the distance, her eyes looked great…

but I preferred Chilly Gonzalez, the supporting artist at his piano. The concentration, the same moody lighting, the white gloves.. Of the two, Chilly Gonzalez was far more interesting to shoot and I particularly like this …


On Sunday I was photographing music of a totally different nature; the 4000 strong “Rock Choir” filled the Hammersmith Apollo (I still want to call it The Odeon after all these years). With members both on the stage and in the dimly lit auditorium this was quite a challenge. My favourite from the shoot was this one, where I grabbed a chair and climbed above the choir on the stage to shoot over their heads and picture the conductor with further members behind him…


I always hate to end on a bum note… but with the England football team playing today to stay in the World Cup, I think it is appropriate given the way they have performed. I covered the Brighton event of the World Naked Bike Ride. Great fun as ever.. I’m just glad I did not need a paramedic…

Royal Academy Summer Exhibition and Amy Macdonald

After the BAFTA’s on Sunday, I decided to have a couple of “rest days” (read office days), returning to shooting on Wednesday evening for these two events.

The nice thing about the Academy shoot was we were in the courtyard which gave use some wonderful architectural backdrop (not that you can see it in the close cropped shot of John Hurt below). We also had plenty of room. I planned to shoot the first hour of arrivals before running up to The Hard Rock Cafe for Amy Macdonald.

Splitting jobs like this is a risk as you are bound to miss some attendees of the first event (and there is always the danger of arriving too late for the second) but in this case it worked out quite well, I only missed 2 or 3 opportunities at the first and I arrived with 10 minutes to spare for the second.

The stage / performance area at The Hard Rock is quite small and the light is usually quite poor as well, normally just flooded with single colours. I decided to use a single camera and a 50mm lens, a really old fashioned shoot, looking for angles. For this shot I was almost on the stage …


Overall I was pleased with the evenings work…

British Academy Television Awards 2010

For the viewer, the TV BAFTA’s started around 7pm. For the photographers it started far earlier, having to collect our passes at around 3pm before allocating our space for the red Carpet arrivals at 3:30pm. That leaves about 2 hours of waiting before the first arrivals.


The fact is, for professional photographers the amount of time actually taking photos is quite small compared with editing, captioning, finding new clients, generally running a business and of course, waiting. One of my colleagues talks about the waiting and the “banter” being one of the best parts of the job…. (I’m not so sure).

After the last arrival at 6:45pm it was up to the press area to cover the award winners. When watching the ceremony on TV, you might not realise but the awards rattle on at a fair old pace and in the press area we were seeing new winners every couple of minutes. When you consider that we are taking maybe a group shot, head and shoulders of some or maybe single portraits, there is not much time to breathe, let alone back up your shots, weed out the poor ones etc etc.


This is where the “might” of Getty win out. Each photographer is equipped with an editor who takes the cards, picks the shots, captions and “files”. Tasks that I do alone.. I say win out, the upside of this is that the photographer is totally focused on shooting and gets to finish earlier (I did not complete the job until 2AM) . My upside is that I have total control of my images, from start to delivery….