UK Youth Parliament

Really inspiring day on Friday listening to the British Youth Parliament debating in the House of Commons. Over 300 MYPs (Members of the Youth Parliament) participated in the debate, elected by their peers to represent them. This year, a record number of 11-18 year olds – 478,386 – voted for their subjects to be debated by MYPs in the House of Commons. I came away full of optimism, truly amazed at their debating skills, confidence, and passion and belief in democracy – and relieved that the biggest group shot I’ve ever had to do of about 350 came out..

Glastonbury Festival 2013

Glasto, where the crowd are much more interesting than the musicians – though if you squint you might just be able to spot the elusive Mr Jagger.

Thank You!

Wow, what a week..Was lucky enough to have my last post picked up and ‘Freshly Pressed’ by the lovely folk at WordPress, one of only 8 on that day, and since then have had almost 9000 views, in 62 countries!

Truly exciting to suddenly feel like you have an audience for your work, and one that’s left such amazingly positive comments. I feel the pressure now to keep the standard up!

I do hope that all the new followers will stick with me through the odd not very interesting corporate portrait, after all this site is partly designed to be a shop window for the odd punter who might help with the day job of actually getting paid to take pictures, but the feedback has inspired me to get out and do some more ‘own work’ (hate that term!), stuff like the New York shots. I’m very lucky to get paid to take all types of pictures, and it’s the real variation in subject matter that makes it so interesting, but I hope to use the positive vibe that this has given me to now maybe dust off and rediscover a bit of the drive to shoot some new documentary work, which is really the stuff I enjoy doing most.

Here’s a shot of my son going someway to describing the emotion I felt every time the inbox pinged with a new follower this week!

Thanks again for looking.

New York streets

Was lucky to get a brief stay in New York last month, and basically just spent 2 days walking the streets of Manhattan with camera in hand, so enjoyable.

The Pigeon Men of New York

Two local celebrities in Washington Square Pk, New York. Larry the Pigeon Man used to live in the park but now comes in from Brooklyn everyday to feed his friends. He seems to have names for all of them and knows all their family trees. His friend William, a real estate broker, comes down from his office overlooking the park, most lunchtimes to feed and spend time with them too. Having raised two of them by hand several years ago, he’s certainly recognised by the birds, and the come to him in turn when their names are called.

They both do their best to quash the opinion of pigeons as dirty disease ridden animals – “with a body temp of 107 degrees, they can’t carry diseases that humans can catch” says William. Larry claims they know how to read and are the 4th smartest animals on the planet.

Two really sweet, caring guys.

Monarchy, skeletons, footballers, suits, musicians and strippers, a busy May.

Yep, bit of everything this month, at least a couple of the jobs merit their own edit and post when I get time, but in the meantime here’s a few faves from the 14,000+ frames I’ve shot this month (not including a big file called New York on my desktop which has yet to be edited!). Commissioned shots from the state opening of Parliament, a nike installation, some classical pianists and of the new England football strip in the changing rooms at Wembley before their game last Weds. Oh, and a ‘burlesque’ dancer from an entertaining one-off event at the Old Vic Tunnels under Waterloo.

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