Beauty, Bochner, Le Bon and a Box.

It has been quite a while since I last had time to post on this blog. Having too much work to do to social network can only ever be a positive but for all you neglected followers I thought I would post a roundup of some the things I have been shooting. So here it is welcome to the Busy Boy Blog.

Let’s get started with something that at first seemed to have very little potential. I was hired by Arthur Cox a firm of solicitors to shoot an Irish corporate fashion show. It only got worse when I got there as walked in to high ceilinged unlit room and the small carpeted stage was hardly Fashion Week. However it turned out this quiet show was the perfect place to light it as I wanted not as some else had designed. With a bit a light the clothes and the room suddenly came to life.

I even got the chance to shoot a shoot a couple of models portraits back stage, with the unassuming back drop just adding to the shot.

Next comes art.  I have never pretended to understand art, nor have any pretence that I have ever created it.  In my opinion press and portrait photography is creative recording of events and people, but art it is not. Till someone lends it a new context or changes it for better or worse. Anyway having said that photographing art and artist is one of my favourite things to do, there always seems like there is always an angle to explore. In case of Mel Bochner at the Whitechapel Gallery having this relaxed and personable artist surrounded by his own colourful words, appealed to me.

From art we move to errrrm music. The tunes of Duran Duran were never my thing but then I go to gigs in small dirty rooms beneath pubs and I am pretty sure they played Wembley so who I am I to judge. When photographing their lead singer Simon Le Bon far from the wave haired, pale yellow suited fop I half expected was a smart and friendly man supporting a very good cause, hope for them yet.

And so finally to the box. This had to be one of the oddest briefs I have ever received. Photograph a box arriving at Heathrow, the contents of the box will not be visible at any time. Now I have been known to work wonders but this maybe pushing it too far. How was I going to get a usable press picture out of just a box. However as two bright yellow eyes peered directly at me from inside I realised I might just get something out of this, though it would be tough. The box contained a Sumatran Tiger being transported to London Zoo for breeding.

All my lens were too big to get a good picture through the tiny holes in the box and realising there was no other way I turned to the great enemy of the pro photographer. Camera phones, have never been a favourite thing of mine, even for shooting holiday snaps but it was the one thing with a lens small enough to shoot through the holes.

Thus rewarded with my grainy close up of a Tiger I became very interested in if it would get used. It brought up some of the big questions in press photography, we all agree that the camera is a tool for the eye of the photographer, but this was a particularly unsophisticated tool. The question is at what point does the right picture become wrong due the poor quality of the tool used. I still don’t know the answer, the shot was used http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2219663/Two-Sumatran-tigers-crates-flown-new-home-London-Zoo-breeding-program.html. I leave the decision to you.