Licensed to Chill
Having spent the last few years with Glastonbury as my only festival event of the year, last weekend I got the chance to broaden my horizons and try out some of the competition, ie “The Big Chill” in Herefordshire. Running from the 5th to the 8th of August, the line-up consisted of a similar range [...]
Raiders of the Lost Archive
Last week, I had the chance to visit the BFI film archive in Berkhamsted to see how the renovation and restoration of Alfred Hitchcock’s first acknowledged film, “The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog” was coming along. The tour started in the acetate archive, a vast warehouse built to house some of the thousands [...]
They say it changes..
Having tried to put a blog together on this year’s Glastonbury festival, I was struggling to decide on which frames to drop until our lass suggested that I split it into on-piste and off-piste, as it were. You should have already seen the light. Now for the dark.. For me, the best time to shoot [...]
A Worthy cause for celebration
This year, Glastonbury Festival of Performing Arts turned 40 with what ended up being a ridiculously hot weekend of music, performance and general chaos. Thankfully, I was sent down to the site for my second year running for AFP (and my ninth actual Glasto). Heading down as early as I could on Wednesday, I arrived [...]
“I was right about that saddle..”
AKA Flash ‘n’ the pannier.. On the 12th of June, I covered the World Nude Bike Ride event in central London. Now, as you can imagine, aside from saying “what the hell are they doing?”, there’s not much more to be said so this is more of a photo-blog. Hurray say those who never bother [...]
It’s a Tory’s morning glory
So the campaigning was over and the votes were in. Overnight, early predictions had swayed between a thinnest of victories for the Conservatives and a Hung Parliament. As day broke over Westminster, it was looking like we were about to enter an a very rare era in British politics. The question now remained; how the [...]
Never mind the ballots
Having been working in London for seven years, it’s been odd to think that this is the first general election that I’ve actually covered. Back in 2005, I was working for The Times and as far as my archive shows, I appear to have been assigned the all important mopping-up duties by the picture desk. [...]
Stung
This morning, I was asked to attend an event at Abbey Road studios with Sting. Arriving at the door, I could only tell the receptionist that I was here for “some Sting thing” as I had nothing but the name and the venue. Having been mistaken for an in-house photographer when shooting at Abbey Road [...]
Slip sliding away..
When you cover a job for a month, you very quickly lose track of what happened where and when so sitting down to write anything from the Winter Games in Whistler is going to be hard. Long days and nights of covering training sessions on the icy slopes soon merge into one and only certain [...]
Variety is the spice of life
The last time I was in Blackpool, I spent the day dashing between the “Haunted Swing” and the “Steeplechase” at Blackpool Pleasure Beach and building up the guts to go on the creaky looking “Grand National”. Nineteen years later, I’m onstage at the Opera House in front of a few thousand people taking pictures of [...]
Recession hits the money shot
Another year, another Erotica exhibition at London’s Olympia centre. Having covered this event four times, it’s actually become quite a challenge to get something that’s both different from previous years and is acceptable for publication on the news wire. While horrible nastiness and the carnage from Middle Eastern suicide blasts often makes it’s way straight to [...]
Bring on the Wall!
In full JFK-style, I became “ein Berliner” when I flew over to Germany last week to work with the Berlin bureau in the coverage of the celebrations and events surrounding the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Never having visited Berlin before, I had the usual mixture of anticipation and nerves with [...]
..and one rule for another.
Yesterday, I was put on “Climate Camp” watch along with fellow AFP photographer and good friend Shaun Curry. Following a few days of media hype with demonstrators refusing to give any information on their planned camp site location and the police offering “community-style” policing if the demonstrators were prepared to cooperate, we both went to [...]
A full 360°
With their trademarked sense of understatement, U2 set up camp in Wembley Stadium for a two-night residency and I managed to get into the first night to see what subtle delights they had to offer on their 360° tour. Running over 2009-10, the tour is expected to include up to 100 shows all over the [...]
Freerunning the world
In a further attempt to remind myself how out of shape I currently am, I volunteered to cover the World Freerunning Championships in Trafalgar Square. Having shot the preview for last year’s event at the Roundhouse, I was reasonably prepared for what to expect but seeing it up close was something else. A small portion [...]
Metal as anything
After the love and peace of Glastonbury 2009 comes the angst, anger and aggression of the Sonisphere rock festival at Knebworth. Featuring rock and metal bands ranging from veteran British groups “Saxon” and “Heaven and Hell” through to the latest young bands from around the world such as “Airbourne” and “The Defiled”, it saw the [...]
Eavis: Outstanding in his field.
Having had a lot of my Glastonbury festival shots on the Boston Globe’s “Big Picture” site, I wasn’t sure how to put this blog together as I didn’t want to just repeat shots that a lot of people have already seen. In the end, I’ve decided to go for a mix of some of my [...]
Broken Cabinet? Yeah, it’s a Common’s problem..
With tonight’s news that Works and Pensions Secretary James Purnell has quit his position in the Cabinet and released an open letter to various newspapers calling on British Prime Minister Gordon Brown to quit, it reminds me how fascinating this job can be. The news from Westminster over the last few weeks has been slowly [...]
Madchester? I’m f@*!in’ livid!
As many of you know, I LOVE football. Everything about it excites me, be it adding new parts to your kit, learning new grooves or finally nailing a fill you’ve been working on for a while… Erm.. Hang on. That’s drumming. Oh, FOOTBALL. That’s the one I don’t like at all. Pushing this from my [...]
IIIIIII’m wicked and I laser..
In a thoroughly unusual turn of events, yesterday I turned up to shoot Jean Michel Jarre‘s first world tour when it came to Wembley Arena only to be given a AAA laminate and told that I could stay as long as I wanted. Huzzah! Makes a change from the usual three song limit. Looking like [...]
Beached
One job that proved very successful for me and still creates interests and enquiries from viewers on flickr was my coverage of the sinking of the MSC Napoli cargo ship and the resulting free for all that put the village of Branscombe on the international news map. Having heard about a cargo ship running aground [...]
O2-D2
AKA “Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark Side”. Last night, I got the chance to see the world premiere of “Star Wars:A Musical Journey” at the o2 arena in London. As I sorted out my pass, the area around the venue was filled with rather giddy parents, over-enthusiastically pulling their kids over to see Boba Fett [...]
In the words of Mr. Punch..
..”That’s the way to do it”. Having extensively covered the G20 protests last week, I can honestly say it was a real pleasure to photograph the Tamil demonstration in Westminster. By arranging the “flash-mob“-style protest through text messages and avoiding social websites that can be monitored, the group managed to appear from nowhere and catch [...]
G20-20 visions
After countless hours of research, meetings, plans and tactic proposals, the G20 rolled into town on Wednesday for a few days of PnP (politics and protests). First job of the day was a visit to Maggie’s Cancer Care unit in Hammersmith with Michelle Obama and Sarah Brown. Usually a pool job means one photographer and [...]
