Great to see my Halifax Thunderbirds ads I shot for Adam & Eve DDB up on billboards all over the place. Was also great to become part of Thunderbirds history at the same time. My shoot was the last time the Thunderbirds were filmed and photographed in the original studio that Gerry Anderson set up all those years ago, sadly now the studio is being knocked down. Was great to get to see it and all the amazing sets and meet the famous puppets
Adventgram 2016
Hope everyone had a great Christmas? I went hunting for numbers throughout December for my Adventgram count down to the big day.
It was a great year this year with lots of people joining in.
Architect @ work
Before Christmas Friends & Co asked me to produce a series of photos to promote the ARCHITECT@WORKs exhibition in London.The shots were a series of studies of materials that some of the exhibitors produce. They enlisted the talents of stylist Despina Curtis to help me bring it all to life, it was great to work with Despina she created some lovely sculptures with the materials we had.
images © David Sykes 2016 All rights reserved.
Takeaway time.
images © David Sykes 2015 All rights reserved.
My latest work for Just Eat has been up and around the country for the last few weeks, it was shot for the lovely guys at The Red Brick Road.
The shoot was lots of fun with a studio full of popadoms and the smell of cooking king prawns! We all snacked well that day!
The just eat app has been very useful too as we moved into our new house recently and finding the best takeaways was great as it's taken a while to unpack all the kitchen stuff!!
Happy and healthy new year
images © David Sykes 2015 All rights reserved.
Happy New year to you all, so here we are another year, hope everyone has a happy and prosperous one!
The end of last year was a very busy one work wise, so much so I didn't get a chance to blog much so after this one I'm going to post all my latest news in a flurry of posts, so i apologies in advance!
So Kale is the latest super food and I was delighted to help promote Florette's new salad baby kale for the Now agency.
Creative director Lee Smith came up with some great ads and when I saw the layouts I knew they were right up my street.
It was a fun and very healthy shoot with lots of lovely baby kale left over for us all to have lots of very healthy salads in the days that followed!
The finished ads are running now in magazines and on 48 sheet posters. Grab a bag and help that healthy start to the new year ;-)
Christmas all wrapped up.
images © David Sykes 2015 All rights reserved.
Before Christmas I was asked by BBH to shoot a Christmas poster for British airways. It was great to work with Harry Orton and Robin Warman again, they came up with a clever idea to use the belts as a bow. The poster was used on their 96 sheet poster site that welcomes people as they arrive at Heathrow airport as well as 48 poster sites.
Hello wispa
images © David Sykes 2015 All rights reserved.
So August turned out to be a chocolatey month, I shot for Toblerone and wispa in the space of weeks.
I can't share my Toblerone work yet as it won't be out until later in 2015 but I can share my Wispa work.
It was great to work with the guys at Fallon again having shot some work for George earlier in the year.
It was also great to get to work with the talented Paul Baker who has help me out in the past with his wonderful chocolate and food creations.
It was a fun shoot to work on and as wispa was always one of my favourite chocolate bars when i was a kid, so having a few left over at the end was great!
ebay saves the day!
images © David Sykes 2014 All rights reserved.
Earlier this year I was asked by Adam & Eve DDB to shoot a new campaign for ebay.
Nick and Sam from A&E DDB came up with some great and funny ideas showing how ebay can turn a bad situation into a great one!
It was a lovely shoot to do, the funniest one was the Goldfish we had a goldfish handler from Amazing Animals to help keep the star of the show under control! BTW no animals were harmed in the making of this as he was a trained stunt goldfish!
Babies and golden lions
images © David Sykes 2014 All rights reserved.
During last year's Marmite 'Neglect' campaign, one of the stars of the TV commercial was the 'Baby One' jar of Marmite. So much so, that Marmite produced a limited edition run of Baby Ones.
Nick and Tom (the creatives behind the campaign), thought it would be great to take a series of pictures showing how loved and cared for the Baby One is now, post rescue.
They asked if I wanted to help with their personal project and I jumped at the chance, and, with the styling talent of Caterina Gobbi, we created a series of little scenes of life after rescue. The result are these lovely, heartwarming shots of Baby Ones that have found new, loving homes.
I also had some great news at the beginning of the summer the 'Neglect' campaign I shot last year won some Gold Lions at this years Cannes advertising awards for best outdoor and best press advert.
Sweet commission
images © David Sykes 2013 All rights reserved.
Last month I was asked by Karmarama to shoot their new campaign for Hartley's jam and jelly. When the layouts came through I was super excited as they wanted to make a type ad but it was to be all made out of their jam and jelly, it was right up my street! They wanted it to be shot in camera as much as possible, which is just the kind of challenge I like.
I asked Peta O'Brien to help with this challenge. Peta and I have been working together for years, and I knew her extensive experience would be invaluable with a project like this. Peta came up with an ingenious way to shoot the jam and jelly in one, and we asked model maker Paul Baker to help work out how to make it a reality. I knew that the job was in capable hands and when the forms arrived to fill in the jelly I was super excited, they looked like a work of art before we'd even begun to fill them with jam and jelly.
Hartley's sent over more jam than I'd ever seen in all my life, but it was all needed, and it took most of the prep day for Peta to fill the mould for the jam.
The actual shoot was lots of fun, a couple of long sweet and sticky days, but it was all worth it as the end result looked fantastic. It was really good to work with such a fun creative team and client, Robin the art director kept us entertained all day.
The big jelly Letters Peta made were amazing, they had a great texture to them, everyone enjoyed playing around with them once we had wrapped (a little too much, as quite a bit ended up stuck to the studio celling!)
The finished ads are out and about in the UK press right now.
Here's some behind the scenes photos from the shoot.
images © David Sykes 2013 All rights reserved.
Don't forget it!
images © David Sykes 2013 All rights reserved.
Last month I shot the latest Marmite campaign for Adam & Eve DDB with creative team - Tom Webber and Nick Sheppard.
It has to be one of the most enjoyable shoots I've worked on for a long time, from start to finish. Sometimes you get layouts sent through and you can tell straight away that it's going to be a great ad, this was no exception. It's such a clever and simple idea, and the way they wanted it shot was right up my street!
All the guys from A&EDDB and Marmite were great to work with. It was a fun couple of days shoot, if not a little sticky at times! (I've just about got the smell of Marmite off my Camera gear).
Wesley West had a great time making all the prop products that are in the cupboards. I helped out by shooting the food photography for the packaging, I couldn't resist having my photo's in one of my photos!
The TV ads they've created are also great and very funny and are causing a bit of a stir right now, as you've probably seen!
My posters are going up around the UK on 48 sheet posters and 6 sheet - keep an eye out for them.
Why not visit the Marmite site and help end Marmite neglect!
But don't report us here, I promise we will get through all of theses soon enough!
Been a good week this week my Marmite work got featured in Luerzer's Archive and got awarded best outdoor on best ads
Was great seeing my work out and about.
Credits
Creative Director Mike Crowe Creative Director Rob Messeter Creative Tom Webber Creative Nick Sheppard Business Director Kate Hewitt Agency Producer Craig Neilson Photographer david sykes Art Buyer: Daniel Moorey
Carluccio's cracking Easter eggs
image © David Sykes 2013 All rights reserved.
Last month I was commissioned by Irving & co to shoot this year's Carluccio's Easter poster campaign working with the talented Ana Rachel.
The poster design was great, very simple and they'd designed fantastic type to go with it. It was a dream job as photographer, and when the product arrived I was even more pleased!
The Carluccio's eggs are beautiful objects. They were lovely to shoot. We had a great day coming up with different ways to show off the eggs. In the end we decided to see what they would like cracked - showing off the dark chocolate inside, looked even more delicious! It did take a while to get them to break in the right way though. In the end I perfected a technique that works perfectly every time ( with a little help from a hammer! )
I also managed to film a short animation for them at the same time, using the mini chocolate eggs - which you can watch below.
I hope everyone has a great Easter and, I hope you are lucky enough to receive a Carluccio's Easter treat!
image © David Sykes 2013 All rights reserved.
Music : J'y Suis Jamais Allé by Yann Tiersen Available on itunes here
Michael Parkinson's background
All images © David Sykes 2012 All rights reserved.
I was recently commissioned by Sky arts to shoot some backgrounds for a couple of their new shows, here is the one I shot for the new Michael Parkinson show Parkinson: masterclass it starts on the 13th of November looks quite good. It's up on 48 sheet poster nation wide keep an eye out for them. Unfortunately I didn't get to meet the man himself the portrait was shot by their in house photographer. I'm sure parky is a fascinating man to talk to, maybe next time?
The final frontier...
All images ©David Sykes 2011 All rights reserved.
One of my latest shots is up on poster's for You Tube's space lab. I worked with Aidan Sharkey at Toaster.
You Tube are asking people to come up with a science experiment for space and upload a video explaining it to YouTube. If the idea wins, it will be performed on the International Space Station and live streamed on YouTube to the world!
It was a fun shoot to work on, the helmet was a genuine nasa helmet, shipped all the way from America for the shoot so had to be handled with care!
Fuelling imaginations
All images ©David Sykes 2011 All rights reserved.
My latest work for Esso is now running on 48 and 6 posters in the U.K. The shoot was commissioned by DDB London working with Art director Matt Lee and copywriter Brian Ridley. One of my first ever commissions was for Lego 12 years ago so was great to be working with Lego again.
Stopwash
All images ©David Sykes 2011 All rights reserved.
My latest work for Persil Bio is now running in the press and up on posters in the U.K. I was working with the very talented creative team from BBH art director Harry Orton and copywriter Robin Warman. Model making was by the excellent Wesley west and styling by the fabulous Jennie webster
Hellmann's with a Spark
All images ©David Sykes 2010 All rights reserved.
My latest work for Hellmann's mayonnaise is now running in the press and up on posters in the U.K. I was working with the excellent art director Guilherme Nobrega at ogilvy.It was a fun shoot although the studio did smell of garlic for a week after!
Back to work
Heinz Ads make it into Archive
All images ©David Sykes 2009 All rights reserved.
My heinz campaign for AMV BBDO working with the creative team Pete Davies and Adam Rimmer has made it into the latest Lurzers archive.
Nominated for D&AD Award
All images © David Sykes 2009 All rights reserved.
My mash Lurpak poster was nominated for a D&AD pencil and has made it into the book.