Category Archives for Portraits

Film stills for Shell

Another memorable one – some stills in-between filming with TV presenters Jake Humphrey and Vicki Butler-Henderson. All the more memorable because of the trips in the back of the Porsche and Maserati, first trying to take pictures with heavily pregnant Vicki driving pretty much flat out, and then the 3-laps at the end of the day with the pro racing driver on set, driving the Porsche completely flat out. Exhilarating and terrifying in equal measure..

London Mayor Boris Johnson

A morning with London’s ever entertaining Mayor, Boris Johnson, for Square Mile Magazine on a visit to Smithfield’s meat market in East London. He initially received quite a mixed reaction from the workers there, most unhappy at having to pay Congestion Charge to get home in the mornings after working all night, but his slightly ‘bumbling’ style won most over – and you have to hand it to him, he does cycle everywhere, complete with Sellotaped helmet, something I can’t imagine his New York equivalent doing. Positioning of B.J. Meats sign a bit of a godsend, and did his arch-nemesis Ken Livingstone leave something behind?

Oil folk

Blessed with a great sky for some Shell guys at one of their tanker ports

Moorhouse Consulting

Some portraits of the nice folk at Moorhouse Consulting a couple days ago, great to walk into their office and see some of my previous work for them, black and white street stuff, going up on their walls and being used on the covers of their publications.

Steve McQueen in Parliament

 

Oscar nominated director of ’12 years a slave’, Steve McQueen, with leader of the opposition Ed Miliband, in parliament to introduce a showing of his film earlier this week.

Peter O’Toole the wizard

peter o'toole blog-1

I was very lucky over 10 years ago to do some stills on a production filming at Twickenham Stadium involving Peter O’Toole, who sadly passed away this week. Annoyingly the production company ended up with the negs, leaving me with just one print, though there actually weren’t many shots as the director’s last words to me before I started were: ‘oh yeah, you know he really hates photographers’. With that ringing in my ears, I kept my distance concentrating on recording the filming process, and when I finally manoeuvred myself close enough to get a portrait, the look that he gave me ensured it was only one.

I think in similar circumstances today, armed with the quiet shutter on my Canon – much less intrusive than the clunk of the Pentax 6×7 that this was taken on – and the small matter of a decades more experience under my belt, I would be a bit bolder to get the shot. Still I’m very happy to have at least some evidence of a brief brush with Hollywood royalty/Lawrence of Arabia!

Mosque visit

Had a fascinating evening last week at a London mosque photographing the visit of one of their religious leaders. It was great to get access to somewhere that I would never dream of going into normally, I was made so welcome and nobody objected to being photographed which made it doubly great, what with an amazing biryani thrown in too!