This was a campaign in Wales to promote basic everyday changes people can make to help the environment. I was approached by a Welsh public relations agency for the project which was backed by the Welsh Assembly Government.
The brief was to create a short video clip and individual photograph of each Climate Change Champion which would be released to local press and online media every month leading up to christmas.

The Champions were difficult to get together at one time so we were restricted to a morning to shoot everything. Individual campaign press shots, groups shots and shoot the video statements.

Take a look at the video montage of behind the scenes, interview footage and stills.

I was contacted by a model I regularly work with on commercial fashion shoots. She wanted to to get some new portfolio shots but something different to her normal look. For a few years now we have been shooting for a client in Swansea, it’s always been for their catalogue and website and has always had a commercial style.

I got together with a make up artist I regularly work with and we went over a few ideas, I wanted to do a beauty shoot with the model but I also wanted it to have a more editorial look.

I had a random look on ebay for ideas for accessories and found a pair of vintage flying goggles for a grand total of £8, for wardrobe I contacted a designer in West Wales who creates one off garments by recycling jumpers, cardigans, dresses etc. I had seen some of her designs on her flickr gallery a few moths before and saw this as an opportunity to use something a bit different, the recycled clothing has always been photographed in a certain style, nothing like this though.

So we had wardrobe, accessories and a model, all we needed was a location. I felt a studio would work for this shot but I don’t have my own and the shoot didn’t justify hiring one.

At the time, I had a standard white B&Q gazebo erected in my back garden, through the summer I had noticed the wonderful soft light inside when the white drapes were hanging down, and using a ‘tent’ outside to control daylight reminded me of iconic German fashion photographer Peter Lindbergh who shot a set of images using black canvas/tent to control the light falling on his models.

I bought some large sheets of black cotton to black out the ceiling and walls of the gazebo. On the day we decided to shoot we were blessed with clear sky and lots of sun. Blacking out the top and sides effectively gave me a dark tunnel to shoot through, no fill light bouncing in from anywhere I didn’t want it to. I hung a white background at the back with the sun hitting it and to get a brilliant flared light in to the lens I put up a single studio light facing toward the camera. The only light hitting the model’s face was bounced from behind using a silver reflector.

We had planned to shoot with the model’s hair scraped back in to a ponytail of some sort but we were still unsure how we wanted it to look. When the ebay goggles arrived in the post a few days before, the strap was so old it snapped as soon as I stretched it, so I had bought a length of fake leather to create a new strap, there was quite a lot left over so we decided to cut it into strips and bind the models hair with it, as you can see from the video it was a two person job involving hair pins and electrical tape to hold everything in place.

The recycled dress designer sent me two garments, only one had the neck and collar I was looking for but it was still a little too open, solution….put it on backwards and use small grips to hold it together.

The last touch was the use of different objects held in front of the lens to create a more distorted flare or blur effect, settling on some shimmery red translucent fabric I have had in my lighting bag for a while (I knew it would come in handy again one day).

So that was our shoot, one model, one gazebo, one light, one reflector, lots of black cloth, and a look that is totally different from anything she had done before.

Another quick photoshoot for a local hair salon, the last shoot I did with them [here] was a bit of a test with a lot of model try outs.
This time we had a bit of a punk-rock theme.
Nice simple lighting, brolly overhead and one below the camera for some of the shots and large black screens either side of the models.

I popped this one in because I just liked the shot.

This shoot came about as a collaboration between Swansea University and the Welsh Assembly Government.
As you will often find in these types of commission, (many of my colleagues will agree with me on this) photographing a scientific themed story can fill you with excitement only to have it whipped away from under your feet when you find out that all the juicy stuff’s at the ‘other lab’ and all they have is someone sat in front of a computer….again.
Well for starters I always see the ‘old computer shot’ as a challenge to try and find something new to do as you can see on this blog post > .

On my arrival at Swansea University I was very happy to find that I was faced with tubes and pipes and bubbles and a spectrum of liquids (mostly green). The algae is grown in long plastic tubes and is rotated regularly to get the most amount of light and to help movement as it passes through the tubes, it is then concentrated down to for a variety of applications.

We moved to a second room where the algae was grown in bags, there were a variety of ‘flavours’ which when lit with flash lights gave amazing rich colours.

This has had to wait a while as the company only just launched it’s line. The brief was to create clear bright illustrative images of the leotard designs while at the same time stepping away from the traditional catalogue shots found in similar brand’s brochures.
The client wanted as much action as possible while still clearly showing the patterns and colours available. We were working with the upcoming junior Welsh gymnastics squad, some of which will hopefully appear in world championships and future Olympic games, so we had our action in the bag, what these girls could do a few feet off the ground and in the air for split seconds was amazing….and challenging to capture.

We converted a sports hall at the Sport Wales National Centre in Cardiff into a studio set giving us room to let the girls do their thing, we wanted to add to the action by having some of the girls throw white powder as they moved as if it was the chalk used for grip in their routines, giving even more action to the shot. For this we needed plenty of space and despite covering a large area with plastic sheeting we still made quite a mess.

The behind the scenes video was captured by a friend and colleague of mine, Bristol based photographer/videographer Andy Bush.
Makeup was created by Cardiff based makeup artist Danny Marie Elias

Once again I’ve been building studio’s ‘Blue Peter’ style on location. The advantage of setting up at the clients place of work is that they haven’t got to ship clothing to you and then find somewhere to hang it all.
The shoot was for advertising posters, point of sale and look book brochures to be handed out at shows and to be sent to buyers.
We needed a clean evenly lit front shot because there was a variety of textures and reflective surfaces and we didn’t have time to change the lighting through the shoot, the background needed to be pure white for the layout of the brochures.

One of the more unusual items the client sold was a selection of native american head dresses, they weren’t originally in the shooting lineup, but once we had finished I decided to take our model up on to the roof (at this point the sun had come out and it seemed a shame to waste good light) and we just shot a little more freely, just to see what we could get. In the end one of these shots made it to the front cover of the look book.

I recently had to put together a set of location portraits as an example for a client. I’ve been shooting a lot of medical staff for various clients at variety of locations around the country throughout the year that fitted the bill perfectly. Here’s a small selection.

I’m not sure who started out doing the 60 second portrait but I saw it first on the web blog of American photographer Chase Jarvis. Since seeing the first 60 second portrait movie he made I have seen many more by other photographers on video sites like youtube and vimeo.

So a couple of months ago I was contacted by guy in America who was filming a documentry about a poet called Peter Fulton, he and other poets were coming to a festival in Swansea. I was asked to film them and their performances, areas of Swansea that related to their poems and interviews of the dancers, actors and musicians who took part in the performances.

Here’s a couple of shot’s I took with my phone while we were filming some of the readings.

I can’t show much of the work I produced yet as the documentry is still being edited together with footage taken in America. But after one of the performances I interviewed an actor called James, he had the perfect face and presence to try out a video portrait, he agreed and stood outside….in the rain for sixty seconds and we captured the film posted at the top of this page.

This assignment was to photograph a former nurse who had blown the whistle on cruelty at a care home where he had worked. The BBC’s Panorama programme went on to produce an undercover investigation in to his reports. The brief was to create a dramatic portrait, but without the care home or any related environment.
Very few options presented themselves in the short space of time we had. He worked in a small busy shared office so it wasn’t suitable. This wall was just around the corner from his office and seemed a good spot, away from people and moving traffic and out of direct midday sun. I lit him from behind with one flashgun, I wanted to try to lift him off the page to make him stand out.
I liked the graphic lines and perspective of the wall which draw your eye in to the subject and the outline of light gives the image more depth.

I went along to a Jungle V Fashion night in Cardiff, a friend of mine organises short and sweet fashion shows, it’s a good place to meet local designers, models, makeup/hair stylists and musicians. Basically a designer or boutique turn up with their clothes, the models do a ten minute catwalk through the upstairs club room while the DJ is playing.
Despite getting involved in setting the lighting it’s still pretty bad, everything is lit with a variety of coloured spots and just blasting flash at it kills the ambience of the place.

On this particular evening the Jungle DJ’s were launching their new T shirt brand design and the models were told they could do what they wanted with the T shirts as they all had the same design.
I took a few shots during the catwalk but decided to grab the models after and set up something on the roof, keeping it simple with one lens, one flashgun and one reflector…and some cool sequin shorts (not mine).