UJIA Purim Party
One Saturday evening in the middle of March I was invited along to Revolution in Bank, London, to capture the fun of a great charity party. Purim is a Jewish festival which is partly celebrated by dressing up in all manner of fancy dress, and the charity UJIA threw a great party for young adults in London.
There were loads of brilliant fancy dress outfits - I was impressed by the efforts of most people who turned up, which was close to a thousand!
Check out some of the fancy dress photos below.
Postcode Lottery Green Challenge 2014 Launch
I'm still catching up on blogging all the stuff I've been up to, which is good I suppose as it must mean I've been fairly busy! It's now May and I'm still blogging things from March.
I spent an afternoon at the London Science Museum for a launch event for the Postcode Lottery Green Challenge. It's an annual competition for entrepreneurs with green businesses to win 500,000 euros. The competition has been going for 7 years and is going from strength to strength thanks to funding from the Postcode Lottery.
This launch event saw a talk from Nick Christy, a previous winner of the challenge for his company, Cintep, who create super eco-friendly showers. He spoke about his experiences and what he thinks makes a good entry for the competition. Baroness Verma also spoke for a short while about the competition, what makes it so successful and how important it is to encourage young entrepreneurs.
Following the speeches and some networking over canapes, those that were interested were treated to a quick tour of the museum, in particular the exhibit that features a product from another previous winner of the competition. The product was a brick, yes, that's right, a brick, which is made with no CO2, in fact grown from bacteria. Amazing.
All in all it was a great event and I'm looking forward to seeing who wins the competition this year. Here are a few of my favourite photos from the afternoon.
Jewish Book Week 2014
Having taken photos at Jewish Book Week in 2013, I was pleased to be invited back to cover two or three sessions at this year’s event. Lasting about 10 days (I think they call it a book week because it’s catchier than a book 10 days!) and offering 64 separate events, it really is quite an impressive feat of organisation at King’s Place in King’s Cross, London.
This year I was tasked with photographing a few sessions. The first of which was a talk by William Sutcliffe about his book, The Wall, in the smallest room of the three used for the event. The lighting in the room isn’t great and with flash not permitted, I was quite pleased with the results I got from using the Canon 70-200mm f2.8L II handheld with an ISO around 2000.
The next evening I returned to photograph a talk with holocaust survivor, Otto Dov Kulka and journalist Simon Schama discussing Kulka’s book, Landscapes Of The Metropolis of Death. In the lovely large concert hall at King’s Place, this was a great session. Otto is an amazing man and I really should read his book.
Immediately following that session I moved into the third and final room, where the announcement of the winner of the Jewish Quarterly Wingate Literary Prize was due to take place. An interesting panel discussed the shortlisted books and then proceeded to announce the aforementioned author, Otto Dov Kulka, as the winner for his book which had been featured earlier that evening in the previous session.
I finally returned on one last day to cover a great session featuring Eve Harris, who wrote a book called ‘The Marriage Of Chani Kaufman’ and a Sikh author called Sathnam Sanghera, who wrote a book called 'The Boy With The Topknot: A Memoir of Love, Secrets and Lies in Wolverhampton’. The books shared similar themes despite coming from two different religions and backgrounds. Following that I caught a little of a session by author Irving Finkel about his book, 'The Ark Before Noah: Decoding the Story of the Flood’.
Below are a few of my favourite pics from the event.
Roses, Roses & More Roses On A Four Poster Bed
In the run-up to Valentines’ Day this year I was asked by PR agency, Diffusion PR, to help them out with a photo shoot for their new client, Warner Hotels. Warner Hotels, for those of you who don’t know, is a chain of hotels, with 13 across the UK, that are particularly popular with middle-aged people who want a relaxed break.
The aim of the shoot was to promote Warner Hotels properties as a great destination for a romantic break over Valentines’ Day. Having arrived at the particular property, the Cricket St Thomas Hotel in Somerset, I entered the suite in which we were shooting to find a couple of florists, hard at work covering the beautiful four poster bed with nearly two thousand roses. Yes, two thousand stunning red roses, fresh off the boat from Holland overnight. Needless to say, they did an incredible job making the bed look beautiful. Meanwhile, the client and agency representative were off rounding up a pair of real couples who were staying in the hotel at the time who would be willing to feature in our photo shoot. They soon came back with one couple and we had a lot of fun shooting in front of the bed, on the bed and around the bed! There was a bottle or two of champagne to help our subjects relax whilst also adding to the whole Valentines’ Day vibe.
A few hours later we were finished and we quickly reviewed through the images to pick out the best ones to retouch. Here are a few of them for your viewing pleasure!
