Smiling suitcases for Monocle magazine cover.

The guys at monocle asked me to shoot there May issue cover and I got to shoot my favourite suitcase in the process! I’ve shot Rimowa suitcase a lot of times for Monocle over the years and every time I’m alway impressed with how good they are quality wise and what a joy to shoot as a still lifer!

A dozen dead roses

It’s soon Valentines day, a day for which 250 million roses get produced and in the UK alone around £1.9 billion gets spent on flowers. So I thought it apt to share my latest personal project ‘A dozen dead roses’.

It’s a study of how the beauty of roses remains even after they’ve died. Shot at the end of the day as the sun sets the light change brings warmth back into the rose petals.

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Tasty treats with shortlist magazine.

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!  

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.

Hallo!

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!

images © David Sykes 2016 All rights reserved.

desktop delights

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.

images © David Sykes 2016 All rights reserved.

President cheese

A few months ago I got to work with my old friends at Adam & Eve DDB Tom and Nick shooting some new press work for president cheese.We had a great day shooing lots of yummy cheese dishes with lots of leftover cheese at the end so no one left hungry!

images © David Sykes 2015 All rights reserved.

Pallets full of ideas from Monocle

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!)

images © David Sykes 2015 All rights reserved.

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.

Sizzling success

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!

images © David Sykes 2015 All rights reserved.

Weight of the world

Recently I found some scales that I remembered from being a kid at my local village shop and couldn't resist buying them for a test.The result is this series of texture studies, it is also the beginning of a new project that I'm working on. Watch this space to find out more.

images © David Sykes 2015 All rights reserved.

Flying Robot Cat

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.

images © David Sykes 2015 All rights reserved.

Life is just a bowl of cherries

images © David Sykes 2015 All rights reserved.

This is a recent personal project i've been working on, I'm fond of a cherry or two so this was always going to be a fun shoot to do.

Cherries are such beautiful fruits, they look the same on mass but on closer inspection they all have a unique look of there own, this also applies when you squish them no two burst in the same way!

I didn't realize until I started to squish them how juicy they can be.

Hope you enjoy my juicy cherry pictures I'll be selling prints on my new revamped website which is coming soon......

Mad grand finale

images © David Sykes 2015 All rights reserved.

Sad that this week see's the final ever Mad Men, it's been an amazing series beautiful shot and well written. I look forward to seeing how it all ends with a large old fashion in my hand!

Here are a couple of my Man Men inspired test I've done over the years.

Cheer's

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.

Tools for life

images © David Sykes 2015 All rights reserved.

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.

Adventgram 2014

images © David Sykes 2015 All rights reserved.

December 2014 saw the return of my annual instagram project adventgram, Every day in December I look for and photograph the number that matches the date of that day counting up to December the 25th (Christmas day). All the numbers are shot on my iPhone and have to be found and not made by me.

This year was great as I had lots of people join in using the hashtag #adventgram, I enjoyed seeing other peoples interpretation of my project.

You can see all the numbers in more detail here.

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!