Delicious jewellery

Recently I teamed up with food stylist Olivia Bennett to help me finally shoot an idea that I've had knocking around for about 5 years now. It was a great shoot to work on, Olivia's designs for the Jewellery was fantastic creating recipes that you could wear on a glamorous night out.

I wanted to keep the set and lighting looking like a classic jewellery shoot to help give the view that double take.

images © David Sykes 2015 All rights reserved.

Warming comfort food

images © David Sykes 2014 All rights reserved.

Can't believe this is my first post of 2014! It's been a busy year so far, I became a dad for the first time in November last year so Poppy has been keeping us busy but I've also been busy shooting a mix of advertising and editorial shoots and of course plenty of personal projects. First off I'd like to share one of the personal projects I've been working on with the talented Jessica Dance. We've now finish off our woolly faux food series, a woolly full english breakfast and a woolly hotdog these go with the woolly hamburger we shot last year. It's been a great project to work on Jess' attention to detail making the food is fantastic and it's been great building the environments the food sits in.

A warm and woolly knitmas dinner

images © David Sykes 2013 All rights reserved.

I’ve recently been working with an amazing model maker and prop stylist, Jessica Dance. Her speciality at the moment is creating objects made of wool.

We’ve been working on a few woolly projects together and whilst shooting our ”Woolly mammals” series both of us mentioned that we wanted to create an image for Christmas.

I love shooting food and I always want people to do a double take with my images and spend some time working out what’s unusual about them. Over the past few years I’ve been creating faux food shots; taking classic food shots and recreating them out of everyday objects. This is where I came up with idea of using Jessica's fantastic wool craft to turn a traditional turkey Christmas dinner into a woolly feast.

I knew the food Jessica was going to produce would look great but it wasn’t until she brought them round the studio did I realise how beautiful they would be. Some of my favourite pieces are the pigs in blankets, with it's handmade bacon rashers, and the turkey itself with its perfectly designed drumstick. I wanted the photo, at first glance, to have the feel of a classic food shot, with it slowly revealing its true colours as you realise that something is not quite right. It was quite a challenge to light it and show off all the texture whilst keeping the warm and cosy feel of the wool.

Who’d have thought wool food could make you feel so hungry.

We Loved the final shot so much we decided to make it into a Christmas card to send out to friends and Clients. I wanted a unique greeting for the inside of the cards and came up with the line "Have a warm and woolly Christmas" Which was great, but I also wanted it to have a wool theme. So, I asked Maddy from Vue, who has been wowing me with her excellent typographic illustrations for a while now, to design a illustration for the inside. What she came up with was fantastic, and the card was ready to wing it's way to our friends and clients.

image © Madeline Macrae 2013 All rights reserved.

It's been a great project to work on and a chance to collaborate with some talented makers!

Hope you all have a warm and woolly Christmas and I look forward to sharing with you all of the new and exciting projects I have lined up in 2014!

Watch this space for more of mine and Jessica's woolly faux food.

Party's over

images © David Sykes 2013 All rights reserved.

Recently I was asked by folks over at iGNANT to take part in their on going feature called two of a kind. They ask an Artist and a photographer to take part each time, they send them the same 3 random objects and ask them to create something from them. After looking at the previous entries and their lovely site I jumped at the chance.

So I waited for the package to arrive to find out what objects I would be having to use. When it finally arrived I opened the box (with some apprehension) to find a pair of rubber gloves a packet of party streamers and a set of wooden utensils.

Recently I have been working with the fantastic Jessica Dance while we were shooting another project I mentioned that I'd been asked to do this and asked if she would like to collaborate with me on this one too. She said yes and came up with a great way to use the objects using the wool technique that we've been developing on other projects for a while now.

The end result was the Wooly morning after the night before.

Apologies for a drought in blog posts It's been a busy few months shooting lots of personal work and commissions more to be revealed soon.

Wood chips

image © David Sykes 2013 All rights reserved.

I was very lucky to have this beautiful wood burger and chips made for me by my good friend and model maker Wesley west.

He's a very talented chap and when he said he'd made me the wooden burger I jumped at the chance to use it in a shoot, the hardest thing was deciding how to shoot it!

Get em while they're hot

All images ©David Sykes 2009 All rights reserved.

This is the my latest shot in the Faux food series a fish supper! It's shot in one on 5×4 transparency. The 4 foot plate was made by model maker Ridley West and with the help of Jennie Webster who sourced the excellent props.

I'm also happy to announce that I will be selling Limited edition photographic prints of all three in the series. They will be signed and numbered lambda prints on Fuji crystal Archive paper. They will be editions of 50 the size is 30 inches by 20. The cost of each print is £350 and if you buy all three in the series the cost will be £900. Price does not include delivery and the prints are not mounted. To make enquires about purchasing the prints or any other questions Contact me I'm working on a store and payment system, and will be live April 2010. The payment system is up and running now go to prints sales

All images ©David Sykes 2009 All rights reserved.