Sometimes everything's just black and white.

images © David Sykes 2014 All rights reserved.

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.

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.

lucky number 7

images © David Sykes 2014 All rights reserved.

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)!

images © David Sykes 2014 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.

Bumper issue

images © David Sykes 2013 All rights reserved.

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.

images © David Sykes 2013 All rights reserved.

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.

images © David Sykes 2013 All rights reserved.

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.

Woolly Mammals

images © David Sykes 2013 All rights reserved.

Over the last year myself and model maker/stylist Jessica Dance have been working on a new collaboration and I'm super happy to now be able to share the results with you.

The project came about when we were having a brain storm over a coffee. I loved the Knit heads Jess had done and thought it would be great to build a bit of a story around some new animal heads she was making for our project. We came up with the idea of them all belonging to one person and having them in different rooms of this eccentric collector of woolly mammals house.

So over the next few months we sourced various props furniture and wallpaper and created these little slices into the life of this collector.

It was such a great project to work on and Jess was great fun to work with her amazing skills with the knitting machine are second to none. I love all the little touches she brings to the project, the knitted log is one of my favourites.

The moose head set was massive and took a day to build, the moose was a huge full size moose and was 7 foot from antler tip to antler tip, and stuck out from the wall about 4 foot!

Whilst shooting we came up with lot of knitty ideas so watch this space for some more woolly madness.

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.

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.

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

Drum roll please!

image © David Sykes 2013 All rights reserved.

I was really pleased to be asked by Jessica Dance to collaborate with her on the fantastic paper drum for the 'drum roll' D&AD awards cover in this months Creative Review.

I've been working with Jess on a new personal series of work and it was great to work with her again on a commission look out for the new series to be shown soon.

image © David Sykes 2013 All rights reserved.

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!

Leaving idlewild

image © David Sykes 2013 All rights reserved.

Here's one of my latest personal shots it's a scene depicting Idlewild airport in 1961, now known as JFK. The idea came about after I found a folder with the Pan AM ticket in it whilst helping to clear my wife's grandma's house last year, after she had sadly passed away. Caroline's Grandfather had taken a business trip to the states in 1961 and had kept everything from the trip, from the letters to and from the travel agent, to the match books and drinks stirrers from all the bars and hotels he visited. I love the fact that the trip was such a rare and exciting event that he kept all the momentos from the trip. I even found a ticket from a visit to the empire states building (see if you can spot it in the shot) it's a stark contrast to the disposable and online way we live our lives now.

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

First past the post

image © David Sykes 2013 All rights reserved.

image © David Sykes 2013 All rights reserved.

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!

Goldbären

image © David Sykes 2013 All rights reserved.

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!

image © David Sykes 2013 All rights reserved.

sacred hearts

image © David Sykes 2013 All rights reserved.

Here's my recent valentines inspired test. I found these hearts in my local art shop and couldn't resist getting them, a bit of red spray paint later and voila!

This lady has been stealing men's hearts for years who's next?......

Adventgram final 25

All images © David Sykes 2013 All rights reserved.

Happy New year!

Thanks to all of you that contributed to this years adventgram and followed the project. It was great seeing all the different ways people interpreted the project. I look forward to doing it again at the end of this year.

Hope you all had a great festive break here's to a great 2013

All images © David Sykes 2013 All rights reserved.

The proof of the pudding

All images © David Sykes 2012 All rights reserved.

This Festive season I decided it would be good to create a Christmas inspired shot that I could send out to the people I've worked with over the years, so I started to think up ideas and came to the conclusion that everyone loves festive food and presents at christmas so why not combine the two. That is how I came to create my sock christmas pudding, for those that have followed my work over the years you'll know that I have liked to create food images but not using food but everyday objects to create faux food. So I dusted off (and repainted) my giant 4 foot plate and went about creating my giant sock pudding, the pile ended up being 3 foot high and nearly 4 foot wide and Katie Cordell the stylist had to source over a hundred socks. It took us the best part of a day to create the perfect sock pile and at the end I was tempted to go for the flaming Christmas pud and set fire to them! But I couldn't as I needed them for the next part of my mailer.

All images © David Sykes 2012 All rights reserved.

I thought it would be fun to send people one sock from my pudding as a memento and as creative inspiration, I custom made some sock tags with a challenge on them to make the lonely sock into a festive stocking or christmas character. To help them on there way I supplied a starter kit of some fake fur some red and green felt, googly eyes and some buttons. (see below) I'm asking them to send pictures of the results so I'm looking forward to seeing the festive creations.

All images © David Sykes 2012 All rights reserved.

This will probably be my last post of the year so I'd like to wish everyone a merry christmas and a happy new year thanks for following my blog.

Adventgram 2012

This is adventgram from 2011

All images © David Sykes 2012 All rights reserved.

We are surrounded by numbers every day as a result they tend to go unnoticed, there are 1000's of different typefaces out there, some beautifully crafted some not so. I've decided to celebrate the humble number, and what better month than December the one month that most of us count down to an event, Christmas day. I'm shooting my adventgram project for the second year running. Every day I find and shoot the number of the day on my phone using instagram to publish it. This year I'm being joined by some fellow instagramers using the hashtag #adventgram