Over the last few months I've been asked by Shortlist magazine to shoot some of there food stories. they've all been really fun shoots to do getting to food to behave in unusual ways. I had a great food stylist Iona Blackshaw who rose to the challenge and got the food to do what we needed it to do.
At the end of last year shortlist magazine asked me to shoot some lovely food for them. A super tasty bibimbap perfect for the detox in the new year and some alternative BLT sandwiches invented by Max the genius behind Max’s sandwich shop. The shoot was great fun and I got to work with the talented Rob Morris who styled all the food, his stack of BLT sdwiches was a feat of engineering!
It's that time of year again my 10th Monocle christmas guide. I love seeing what Josh at Monocle gets in for the gift guide and this year was a great one I wanted to take 90% of it home which is always a good sign!
This year was a sneak peek into the front room to see what Monocle santa had left for the big day.
At the beginning of the summer Tatler Magazine asked myself and Jessica Dance to collaborate to produce their luxury watch shoot for the October issue. They had the idea to create sock puppets to wear the watches, so Jess created the 8 characters to star in the story. It was a busy days shoot with a lot of watches to feature but with the watch and puppet wrangling skills of the Tatler team it all went smoothly. When we came to the end of the shoot we worked out that at one point we had around 8 million pounds worth of watches in the studio that's definitely a studio record!
Last month I was asked by Monocle to shoot their May cover.Richard Spencer Powell came up with a great idea to illustrate their 'Survey on the best villages and hamlets to set up shop in',by using Playmobil figures to represent the different trades, I had forgotten how good they were the attention to detail is fantastic! I'll be adding those to Poppy's Christmas list as soon as she's old enough. I'm convicted we also did the worlds smallest beer shoot for the shot of the hand holing the beer stein, We wanted that authentic look so we used real lager in the tiny plastic steins I had to use a syringe and a staple blade to get the frothy head on top! Another fun cover all in all!
Last month I shot a great feature for Monocle Magazine on things to sharpen up your desk. They found some fantastic products to make your desk the envoy of the office.Suffice to say all the items we shot were lovely and I wanted to take them all home!
As well as that I shot my regular inventory shoot with lots more lovely products.
One of my favourite Monocle shoots of the year is the annual Christmas Gift guide, we always have lots of fun sorting through and shooting all the great products the team find for the gift guide.This year there were quite literally pallet loads to work with. There are some great products in the guide the one I was most tempted by was the new star wars toy the Sphero BB-8 great fun to play around with in a big studio (I'm a bit of a sucker for all things tec and Star Wars!)
Sorry it's been so long since my last blog post it's been a rather busy 3 months. At the end of the summer my second cover for Monocle magazine was on sale and again it featured toys! This time is was sylvanian families. It was a fun days shoot getting the models to look there best!
Earlier this Year monocle asked me to shoot the cover for the Japan special. It was a fun one to shoot it was a vinyl figure of Doraemon a flying robot cat from the future!It looked great on the news stands and was one of their best selling issues ever, so I was delighted and honoured to have been a part of it.
Last year I was asked to shoot for my favourite issue the double issue with all the inspiration for christmas in it.
This year was slightly different it was a called 'tools for life' taking different places in our everyday life and helping out with the best tools for each situation. As always it was great to see all the fantastic things that Josh found from all over the world.
I also shot the cover for the travel top 50, a lovely paper craft aeroplane.
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!
Monocle have produced a second book, The Monocle guide to good business, and they asked me to produce some images for a couple of the chapters. Creative director Richard Spencer Powell wanted the pictures to be shot in black and white, which I thought was a great idea. It's been a while since I've shot in black and white, so it was a refreshing change to not be shooting colour. It's a great medium to shoot in, it's all about textures and tones and I'm really pleased with the results.
The book looks great and if you run a business or are thinking of doing so it's definitely worth a read.
It's been a great year working with Monocle this year, and I've shot some great products. For issue 72 I had to shoot a fashion accessories special which was lots of fun, at one point we had over a quarter of a million pounds worth of watches and bags in the studio! I also shot two more shots in the series of Grundig features (see above). Monocle celebrated their 7th year this year and I'm lucky enough to say I have had work in every issue over the last 7 years, it has been a privilege to work on such an inspiring magazine and with such lovely people here's to another 7 years(at least)!
Issue 69 of Monocle is out now and it's their Christmas gift guide issue. It's always one of my favourite issues to work on, so I was very pleased to be asked to contribute again this year. Richard Spencer Powell came up with a great idea to use the fantastic vitso shelving units as the backdrop to display all the lovely gift ideas that Josh had found. I love using the vitso system it really appeals to my graphic still life side, it's super precise and adaptable to any situation because of it's simple timeless design. As usual we had hundreds of items in the studio to choose from and managed to fill one of the big hire studios with it all! I always love getting a sneak peak at all the new gifts and gadgets that are around this year.
This year I also shot all of the stylish merchandise that Monocle put their name to and sell, it was great this year to shoot the products in little sets to create a Monocle house that the products live in.
The double issue is alway a busy time for everyone involved and this year Monocle also had a tie in with Grundig for me to shoot. I'm really pleased with the double page spread image that I created for them.
I recommend picking up this bumper issue, as always the articles are interesting, well written and if you're struggling for gift ideas there's something for everyone in this issue.
Last month I was approached by Ryan Watson, from Shots magazine, to see if he could interview me, I jumped at the chance! Shots is a great Magazine. It has featured some of best photographers and Directors of the past few decades, including some of my favourites.
It's always a bit nerve wracking being interviewed, but I had nothing to worry about it - it turned out to be a lovely piece and, I am very pleased with the end result (thanks Ryan).
It's also nice to have so many of my shots featured, both new and old.
When the article's on their website, I'll add a link - in the meantime go get a copy! ;-)
Last friday my latest work hit the news stands in the form of an advertising wrap on the Sport magazine for the Racing Post. I was commissioned by the talented folks at Sell Sell. They wanted to make an image containing all the essentials one would need at the races, including all the different ways to get info from the Racing Post. It was a fun day the lovely Katie Cordell sourced some fantastic props to make up our gents outfit it was all very fancy, it was like a high end Bond Street store in the studio for the day! I even made my self useful by finding the hip flask we used in the shot while I was away in Salzburg for a long weekend it was one of the few things not to have a Mozart on it!
I was pleased to be asked to shoot another cover for Monocle magazine, this months issue is all about how the world needs the new Germans (and their sweet bear) I had to shoot a super close up of a Haribo bear we had to hold a Goldbären (Golden bear in German) casting which meant we had to buy lot's and lot's of Haribo it's a hard job but someone has to do it! Me and Sam my assistant are still working our way through the reject bears and other yummy Haribo's.
I also had to photograph lots of German stationary for this issue which was great for me because as I've always had a soft spot for some quality stationary from back in my graphic design days!
It's that time of year again the gift guide issue of Monocle and this year it's themed. All the gift ideas are from vienna (who knew they made so many cool things!).
I also shot some of the new Monocle mechanise they are selling this christmas, they have there own umbrella now and I have to say it's probably the best made umbrella I've ever seen but if you're thinking of getting me one for christmas don't I have a tenancy to lose them!
We had lots of fun with paper and boxes this issue and I thought Richard spencer-powells choice of colours for the boxes worked so well I had to give them there very own photo.
This month Monocle magazine celebrates it's five year anniversary and I was asked to shoot the cover and contents of it's anniversary special edition. It was great to go back through the archives with Richard Spencer Powell helping select from all the fantastic print they've produced over the years. (they've been busy!) I'm very proud to have had my photography in every issue of Monocle, it's been a lot of fun seeing all the amazing things they find. Some of my favourite shoots I've worked on over years have been the covers that I've shot.
This month I was fortunate to be asked to shoot two covers for the latest edition of Monocle the first is the front cover and the second is the design directory 2011/2012 cover.The issues main theme is "How do you jump-start Japan?" which is obviously a very poignant subject at the moment. Monocle has produced a limited edition leather support Japan bracelet with all the proceeds going to Civic Force who are helping with the relief effort after the earthquakes. Worth having a look.
Issue 43 is out now check it out.
