2011 – my baker’s dozen
Following my hijacking of Phil Coomes’ BBC “News in Pictures” blog last week, I thought I’d put my slightly revised selection from 2011 on here to continue the series that I began last year. I’m obviously tempting fate as I have one shift left for 2011 on the 31st, so calling these my favourites of [...]
Three days on the Farm
On October 12th, after ten years, the residents of Dale Farm traveller’s site lost their final bid to overturn their eviction, when the High Court refused them the right to appeal the judgement. With every legal option exhausted, it was simply down to the matter of eviction, so I was sent down to cover the [...]
The complete alternative London “Knowledge”
Regular readers may remember the first parts of the “London Knowledge” that I posted a while ago. Having managed the previous “tips”, I squeezed out a further batch to make the century so here’s the final and complete collection. Read and learn (or at least nod with recognition…) You can tell a long-term Billingham bag [...]
Tripoli’s, like, fantastic
With my self-preservation system in full effect, I was assigned to covering the events and features of Tripoli and after weeks of extensive coverage by my colleagues, it was getting harder to find new angles to cover. Still, while ever I wasn’t being shot at, I could always look on the positive side! One of [...]
Life in Libya, September 2011
I was recently asked what my ideal situation would be, regarding how I’d like to work and after some thought I settled on having the freedom to spend longer on jobs that have a deeper back story without the need to feel that I was there at the start. Speaking to Tom Stoddart recently, he [...]
London riots, August 2011
On Saturday, I spent the day in Hyde Park, covering the Women’s Elite Triathlon event before heading off to a barbecue. After a settling in for the evening at home, I got a text from my picture editor telling me of trouble in Tottenham. As it’s only down the road from where I live, I [...]
Caution: This post may contain flashy images
I was recently sent a parcel of goodies to review/torture and while some items won’t be of use to me as a press photographer, one item stood out as being of interest; the Godox PB820 Propac battery pack. To those of you who work in press, wedding and entertainment photography, you’ll already probably own either [...]
Yes, One can
With the Royal Wedding supplements only just hitting the recycling bin, London had to spring back into gear once more for a visit from the American Eagle himself, President Barack Obama. Having already produced some great moments during his visit to Ireland, it was going to be hard to beat some of the fantastic photos [...]
The Royal countdown begins…
12/04/2011 (17 days to go) With the details finally announced, AFP finally receives the list of positions that will be available to us on the day of the Royal Wedding. With so much planning already in place (despite a total lack of actual knowledge on where we’d be), it’s a relief to find that we’ve [...]
The day I shouted at a Wizard
***** THIS IS AN OFFICIAL WARNING – DUE TO TECHNICAL CONTENT, THIS POST WILL ONLY BE OF INTEREST TO PHOTOGRAPHERS WHO USE POCKET WIZARD TRIGGERS WITH THEIR NIKON CAMERAS – ANYONE EXPECTING THE USUAL STUFF PLEASE ENJOY A POST FROM THE ARCHIVE ***** Following a mind-destroying battle with technology to get my new Pocket Wizard [...]
La Fashionata
Last week I got the chance to shoot a couple of days of London Fashion Week. With colleague Carl de Souza organising the week’s coverage, the bulk of the shows are being covered by him with a few odds and sods open for me to play with. The work that goes into dealing with pass [...]
My Sweet Sixteen
While finalising my entries for this year’s photography competitions, I realised that I never look back on the year’s output other than during the hunt for prizes. In light of this, I decided to put together a somewhat belated collection of my personal favourite images from 2010. These aren’t necessarily the ones that I’ve entered [...]
Rally in the Valleys
Like a bolt from the sky from a flaky A380, my Picture Editor decided to throw me a challenge in the shape of the WRC Wales Rally. Up to this point, my only experience of motor-sport rally was climbing in the trees of Sherwood Forest when my Dad took me to watch the Lombard RAC [...]
Battle of the ‘bands
Within hours of returning from the heaven on earth that is Villa Cenami, I was up in Manchester for the annual Labour Party Conference, preceded this year by a knife fight to the death between rival candidates hoping to become the new party leader. With a brief speech by the previous Guvnor, Gordon Brown, it [...]
The alternative London “Knowledge” v4.0
There is no real need to take a camera, especially your Leica, to Focus. When cleaning your lens with a cloth, it will invariably be the final wipe when the cloth slips and you smear a dorito-grease covered finger across the front element. The World Press Awards must be something to do with the Corby [...]
Sensi and Instability (with apologies to Jane Austen)
Glastonbury 2010 was a new experience for me as, this year, I was going all multimedia on this festival’s ass. After pleading with the techno honchos in Gay Paris for some new toys, they managed to get a Zacuto Z-Finder and an Audio-Technica PRO24-CM couriered to me on the day before the festival. The downside [...]
Workflow-a-go-go
I recently discovered that there are quite a few photographers that do not have any real system of filing their images for easier archiving. With this in mind, I thought I’d share my thoughts on how to make life easier when it comes to organising your digital diamonds. When I first arrived in London, a [...]
“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. [...]
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 [...]
