Just Popping to the Blog.

Whilst looking through the drives, I found the Stylist Magazine team photo that they chose NOT to use..

Been a Mary Berry kind of week, what with two shoots in different locations with massively different briefs. 'Ah, you're the wonderful man from Good Housekeeping who is really quick' she said as I arrived for our second meeting at her house. Er no, I wasn't. Still, great to see our first shoot out in print today. This was a tricky one requiring a flat persective from the subjects and yet a conveyor belt at a slightly impossible angle displaying all the goods. Once the shoot was in the bag, we all had fun riding the machine at high speed till we hit the ground, along with several cakes. Mary would not have found that funny.

New website up and running, which should be a bit faster and will now, finally, run on mobiles and IPads. Let me know what you think. Here is a link to a feature that also appeared on the D&AD website under the 'Inspiration' section. Let's hope so. http://brandperfect.org/ More video to come soon.

Back to Goodwood last week for an incredibly hot day at the Festival of Speed. Other than a chance to nose about, it gave me the chance to meet up with the team that I hope to stay in touch with during the course of their epic Land Speed Record attempt. An ongoing project, this project is awesome in it's aims, with a 1000mph car in the next few years (that's fighter jet territory). After a brief chat with the pilot (Andy Green), I took a quick snap, trying to make use of the blistering sky:

As  photographer, locations become critical. There is one that kept being mentioned, but I had never visited. Pulling the car up at the back of Wilton's Music Hall, the exterior masked a truly wonderful heart. I was there to photograph the winner of Stylist Magazine's writing competition, and met the Hall contact before I entered. 'Does it get used a lot?' I innocently asked. "Er, Annie Leibovitz, Ridley Scott-yeah, a bit" he said.

I knew nothing of Liz Jones before this shoot. I know a bit more now, but only because I have read the accompanied interview-I don't think we exchanged any conversation on the day. This is partly my fault, as I hadn't picked up that she is partially deaf. I just that my repartee was running a little thin. Still, she smiled and did all that was asked of her. Oh, and I have now confirmed that the cats did not get paid as much as me.

So there I was, 11am in deepest Sussex getting my wife's car fixed (again), when the phone rings: 'Get yourself to an East London Studio by 1pm for a cover shoot with Caitlin Moran'. Wizzing home to pick up my kit, I prayed that the camera batteries were charged (just enough in the end), and rushed up to town. Nothing worse than finding your subject waiting for you at a studio, but Caitlin's an old pro and simply smiled at my sweaty visage as she finished her article. The nice thing about this job was that although we had a bunch of Glastonbury props to choose from, we kind of made this cover up on the spot. I used some big wide lighting from Profoto (now a must for all shoots) and went with no hair&make up as it seemed irrelevant to the piece. I just hope it doesn't make her look like she is sitting on the loo..