It was a rare treat to photograph at my old haunt Colours Hoxton (formerly Hoxton Bar and Grill), for legendary speaker company Q Acoustics, who were sponsoring a DIY Magazine gig called Class of 2025.
The lineup started with superb noisy bastard/ette/s Mere Amore, followed by the epic Getdown Services who had us laughing and gawping and shouting along from the moment they arrived. Last up were Lambrini Girls - IYKYK.
Of course gig photography isn’t my usual source of income - I’m generally a corporate event photographer to pay the bills, but in reality I have a background as a fine art sculptor, a potter and pottery teacher, a paper cutout artist, a lecturer at a uni, a gig photographer, a fine art photographer, advertising photographer, a bookie, and in the distant past I was a singer/guitarist busker (which at age 10 I earned enough in an hour to buy a dozen new albums to feed my habit which was my only reason for doing it, then packed it in due to self doubt), and then at college doing music tech. It’s quite strange thinking about my life in that way. I guess as a creative one just falls into vocations as they present themselves. My family are a musical bunch so I suppose it made sense to start off there, but visual art suited my naturally quiet nature as time moved on.
It was such a joy shooting the gig at Hoxton Colours, not least because that’s the venue that started my career in photography, when it was called Hoxton Bar and Grill and Lowri organised gigs for up and coming bands to play there.
Thanks Nick and John for getting me on to this job, and Rupert at DIY for helping out too!
It was a joy to be asked back to photograph for Saleloft at The Brewery venue in City of London. Salesloft put on an annual ”Saleslove” tour, which I photographed the previous year, and was asked back to photograph the event this year.
The brief was to capture highlights of people enjoying the day, and speakers on stage.
As well as speakers on stage, there was an exercise put on by the fantastic charity Sleep Pod, who create one person shelters that can be erected with simple materials and provide excellent insulation against the elements. Delegates were tasked with getting into teams and putting a Sleep Pod together.
Thanks again Salesloft!
It was a joy to photograph Terrapinn’s business to business event about identity at the ExCel Centre. I had only just photographed Google Cloud’s stand via Audience at ExCel a few days before so it was nice to photograph Excel again so soon. And thanks to the Elizabeth line/Custom House I can get there in 30 minutes instead of an hour. Thanks Queen!
Terrapinn were great to work with. Marketing manager Abby Cairns made sure I was fully briefed before sending me off to find the winning moments across the sprawling set of booths and talks (both on stage and more informally in the main arena). They needed a fast image turnaround on the same day of selected images. Both Abby and marketing director James were very complimentary indeed about the initial set of images!
FAST IMAGE TURNAROUND YOU SAY?
Yes indeed. I have speedy, portable and colour accurate equipment for on-site delivery of selected photographs, which I can tweak and edit before sending to you via email, WeTransfer or hard drive/memory stick. Terrapinn needed just a few images on the day of people reacting and looking happy, as well as some on-stage shots. They received around 12 images on the day and their simple reaction was “These are amazing! Thanks so much”. So that helped me get through the rest of the day with a spring in my shutter button.
Also a big thank you to photographer Jennifer Moyes who I was covering for this particular event due to unforeseen circumstances (she’s fine). Jennifer is a seasoned professional photographer working in a reportage style.
It was a pleasure to photograph for Apollo Fire in Havant for their outdoors team building/fun day.
It took place at Stansted House in Havant, which is between Portsmouth and Chichester in Hampshire. I’m London based and it’s so easy to hop on the train (at no extra cost to my client), with the bonus of having time on the train home to edit some of the images.
Megan and the team did a fantastic job organising this event of 450 staff. People were clearly having a great time and making new connections. Zing Events put on some great entertainment for the team building exercises; Purbeck and Caravanilla vans were serving really great ice cream; local company Hayling Hog Roast put on some amazing looking meaty foods including crowd pleasing burgers and (of course) a hog roast; Queenie’s and Mochatado were serving great hot/cold drinks - the iced lattes were extremely popular; Crepe Britain were serving crepes; great plant-based catering from Jo’s Kitchen… as you can see, there was a lot happening!
There were lots of activities for the staff to take part in, where they were divided into teams. What I found striking was how everybody was included - even those who were initially not so sure ended up having a great time. For those who were either a bit wobbly on their feet or simply not up to partaking in the physical games, there was a wide range of things to keep everyone entertained, including great food and drinks.
THE BRIEF
The brief itself was simple: photograph people enjoying themselves during the day, and capture a couple of awards and speeches taking place at given times. Oh, and a 450 person group shot! My own aim on top of this, as I do like to be organised to give optimal value/coverage, was to try wherever feasible to capture every activity (10 in total across a couple of large fields), all the food and drink stalls looking busy (another 10 or so), and hopefully capture nice pictures of everyone in attendance in a candid way during activities or at leisure (450 people in total). So I burned a lot of calories that day, and took full advantage of the hydration station. Thankfully, I’m quite used to running around for hours at a time, as most of my work does involve constantly moving. Even during more static events such as panel discussions and presentations, I am invariably on my feet, slowly inching around in ”stealth mode” and constantly optimising my view for the next shot, so I get plenty of exercise in this career!
PHOTOGRAPHIC CHALLENGES
The activities were fairly intense, and to make the most of them I was constantly moving around at high speed while they were on. However there were also many opportunities for me to sit calmly and take photos from a seated position, which I often do to get nice candid shots - nobody suspects the photographer to be sniping them with the camera if he’s sitting in a deckchair with camera in lap!
I do like to appear casual while actually being on high alert - I believe it helps me to blend into the environment and people pay less attention to me. This is why I usually wear non-descript but smart black clothing from head to toe (but not on this day - I was in jeans and a linen shirt so I could look presentable but not overly corporate in this setting). Sometimes, I’ll multi-task by raising my camera to a scene that I believe will develop into a great shot (for example a few people chatting who might suddenly start laughing in the next 30 seconds). I’ll then look around for other moments while keeping my camera on the first scene. I’m well practised in this, and will often work out the zoom and exposure requirements in “scene 2” by eye, meaning I can effectively shoot two scenes at once with a little foot swivel while changing my camera settings back and forth.
Thanks again Apollo, and congratulations on such a great day!
It was a joy to photograph a panel discussion for Vitra at Luca restaurant in Clerkenwell, London.
The informal panel discussion lasted around 40 minutes, with some mingling before and after. The panellists were Becky Sunshine (Freelance Journalist), Johnny Smith (Restauranteur/Owner of Luca), Imogen Kwok (Chef/Food Stylist) and Edward Barber (industrial designer). Edward designed the chairs for Luca, which can be seen in the portrait of Imogen below.
The brief was very simple indeed - capture the panel discussion, some of the audience and a few shots of people mingling afterwards.
Katarina Lalic and Johanna at Vitra were extremely nice to work with, and trusted my intuition in how to shoot the event.
LUCA RESTAURANT, WHAT’S THAT?
Luca are a high end restaurant with a relaxed feel, and fabulous chairs. I was offered a bowl of food which at first glance was rice and feta with some tomatoes on top, but it was SO MUCH MORE! Genuinely, the most excitingly prepared tomatoes I’ve ever eaten. They’d somehow infused acidity and spicy heat right through the entire tomato without appearing to have disturbed their natural texture, which was a revelation (to me, anyway).
DID THEY LIKE THE PHOTOS?
The images were delivered within a few hours of the event, so they could put them on socials.
“Thanks so much for helping us, the photos are amazing! Wow! Really lovely having you :)”. I think that’s a yes? And it was great working with Vitra.
