App Designing Students Visit to Samsung HQ
Back in February I had the chance to visit Samsung's UK and European headquarters in Surrey. The reason I was there?
Four clever students from Hymers College in Hull created an educational smartphone game for Android phones called CryptoConnex as part of a competition called Apps For Good. They won the award in the Learning Category and as part of their prize they got to visit the Samsung head office to have a tour and meet some of the team behind Samsung's latest products.
I was there on behalf of Samsung's PR agency, GoodRelations, to capture the students' visit.
A Royal Visit, Good Relations and London's Coolest New Boutique Hotel
As we move into February, and snow falls in London for the first time this year, it struck me as a good opportunity to show you what I've been up to this January.
I'm really happy to say I've started to work with another top London PR agency, Good Relations PR, for whom I've done two shoots and a third is on the way. I found myself at London Bridge station early in the month on behalf of their client, South Eastern Railway, and in the offices of a big magazine business on behalf of another client, B&Q.
I also photographed a member of the royal family for the first time, when I found myself at a food and wine event for Australia Day hosted by Tourism Australia. HRH Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, popped along for an hour to meet some of Australia's best chefs and sample some delicious food cooked by Lynton Tapp, runner up in Masterchef Australia 2013. She also chatted to John Torode, Masterchef judge, and Darcey Bussell, a judge of a different kind from Strictly Come Dancing.
Thomas Sabo, the premium high street jewellery retailer, invited me along for the second time to photograph a couple of events in London and Manchester where they unveil their latest product lines to their own employees as well as other retailers. The London event took place in the ballroom at the Bulgari Hotel in Knightsbridge, an absolutely stunning venue which photographs so well.
I also did some more work for Diffusion, this time for their client BookATable.com in the very cool club, bar and restaurant DSTRKT in Piccadilly Circus. Keep your eyes peeled for those photos in the media around Valentines day this month. Following that I also took some interior photos in London's extravagant new hotel, The Exhibitionist, which have now been published on the Mail Online. To finish off the month I started working with one of London's finest event catering companies, Jackson Gilmour by photographing an event for them at the spectacular Wallace Collection.
An exciting start to 2015...
A Not So Smelly Shoot
Being a freelance photographer, I get to take photos in all manner of places. Some more glamorous than others. This particular shoot was one from the 'not so glamorous' list.
One Saturday morning, mid-May, I went along to Deephams Sewage Works in Edmonton. The sewage works, operated by Thames Water, is soon to undergo some upgrade works, and before that happened, local residents were invited to go on a tour of the works to help them understand more about how it works and how it will be improved. I was tasked with taking photos of the tours and the participants. There were a mixture of adults and children along with them, and some of the children made photographing the tour a pleasure, as they were pretty photogenic and/or cute.
I was pleasantly surprised that even what I was told were the smelliest parts of the sewage works didn't actually smell that bad. I definitely anticipated it being worse!
Thanks to the Thames Water team for taking us around and looking after everyone. Here are a few of my favourite shots from the morning...
Secret Escapes PR Portraits
Diffusion PR asked me along to one of their clients, Secret Escapes, to take photos of their executive team for use in the media.
I arrived at the Secret Escapes office in Farringdon hoping that it would be a warehouse style office with lots of exposed brickwork everywhere. It turned out the office was a fairly normal open plan office with some funky touches like beach ball lampshades.
Knowing that they wanted the Secret Escapes logo in the photos, I had assumed there would be somewhere in the office which we could easily use as a backdrop. Walking into the boardroom there was a very cool feature wall at one end with a whole load of postcard-like images tiled, one next to the other. No Secret Escapes logo, however! What they presented me with was a old, used, scruffy board mounted logo, which we blu-tacked onto the wall. It was covered in marks and was also highly reflective, which made the photos quite tricky. The whole process, as is often the case with these kinds of shoots, was a bit rushed, so I had to deal with a lot of issues in post production.
In some cases I had to remove the sign and replace it with a digital version!
You can see some of my favourite shots from the shoot below.
