Recent work - September 2024

I’m sometimes torn with “recent work”. I’m always aware that as much of it won’t make it into my main galleries, it feels at odds with the idea of “less is more”. Surely best practice is only to show one’s very best* images?

Ideally, yes, that’s right. But the main problem with being so selective is that I’m not going to be posting very much: it’s hard to get more than about ten** good shots in a year.

So I try to remember that while all images stand alone, individually, they also play a wider role in a gallery (or blog post) of related items. And, indeed, each individual gallery is itself a subset of a portfolio. If I consider a blog post as a gallery of sorts, and contains work that I think is good enough to show, then it absolutely belongs on my website. An image’s strength may not lie in its impact as a photograph (“best”, again), but perhaps as evidence of a certain kind of work or technique. Or it’s a reference to a certain publication or client, or another example of a cohesive style etc.

Which is all to say that “good” is relative, and not absolute; and has many facets other than “impact”.

And so, while “recent work” nonetheless seems a very loose category when compared to, say, a full series from a particular assignment, I don’t know how else I could otherwise publish some of my work.

*“Best” in terms of website content, of course, not necessarily “most artistic”. For instance, an average picture of a celebrity carries more ‘weight’ because it implies access, and it shows one is current. So it would go in a portfolio ahead of a similar, slightly better shot of an unknown person. (Actually, it’s even quite reasonable to pull long-forgotten shots from the archives - I think of the photographer I met who’d taken an actor headshot of Benedict Cumberbatch in about 1998. Anyway, I’ve discussed portfolio theory in depth elsewhere on occasion on my blog.)

**And even if you were shooting every day, with various and interesting subject matter, clients and briefs; and produce, say, a hundred really wonderful photos, you’ll find yourself in the same position for two reasons.

One, unless you want a bloated (and slightly repetitive) portfolio, you have to make way for this new work, which means you have to remove old images.

And two, unless you want a jack-of-all-trades portfolio, you have to prune all but the very best of the best of the new stuff, as well as everything that isn’t core to your offering. Which might be forty images. However you look at it, there’s just some work that won’t make it into a portfolio.

Wakehurst

I was commissioned to photograph staff at Wakehurst, Kew’s wild botanical garden and home to the Millennium Seed Bank.

Recent work - April 2024

Recent work - January 2024

Recent portrait commissions including work for AB magazine, iCrossing, Singapore Airlines and Innovate Communications.

Long live the local

The British Beer and Pub Association supports pubs and breweries across the UK. I was commissioned by 89up to photograph the draymen, landladies, bartenders and farmers who make up the industry - the people behind the pint - to support the Christmas “Long Live the Local” campaign.

CBRE

Portraits of CBRE’s UK Procurement Director Catriona Calder for CPO Strategy magazine:

Recent work - December 2021

Here’s a mixed selection of photos from the past few months. I’m forced to stretch the word ‘recent’ again, in this case because 2021 was only eleven weeks long:

This was one of the first shoots I used my new Canon R6, which is a no-excuses piece of equipment. However, it’s not perfect: it stalled twice on this shoot. Apparently a known issue (except to me at the time), it caused no small amount of unprofessional flappery at the time, forcing me to use my backup 5d Mk3. Like riding someone else’s bike, it suddenly felt alien, weird and jarring, and got in the way of everything.

This was for mpb, who buy and sell camera equipment (I use them).

I went to Gail’s bakery to photograph milk supplied by Brades Farm where the cows are fed Mootral, a natural food supplement which reduces methane emissions by 30%.

National Theatre’s Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time opened at the Troubadour Theatre, Wembley. To illustrate this, we shot the scene where Christopher arrives in London, bewildered and unsure. We’ve shot this in recent years at Paddington and at Piccadilly Circus. This time, Toby the rat is played by Biscoff (it may have been his co-star, Oreo, in the photo: I found it hard to tell them apart).

The day the hairdressers opened

That’s my best effort for a catchier title than ‘Corporate Portraits’, which wouldn’t have brought you here. But then, this is an entire gallery dedicated to recent office photography. With subject matter like this, it’s plain wrong to tantalise anyone with even the most slight clickbait-y title.

So why would I do such a thing - and at Christmas? Well, since nobody had had a portrait for over a year, and with so many staff changes on top, it was inevitable it would occupy a lot of my work (98.8% to be precise) once restrictions were lifted. So while I’d not normally post so many pictures of people in suits, it makes sense to share them as I’ve been doing so much of this kind of work. So, “Sorry, not sorry,” as they say:

Mootral

Mootral is a natural food supplement which reduces cows’ methane emissions by about a third - the environmental implications are huge. It’s a garlic and citrus extract which has the added bonus of deterring pesky flies, meaning happier cows.

I was fortunate to spend some time on Brades farm at the end of 2019. They make high-quality ‘Original Barista Milk’, and use Mootral in the feed. I was there taking portraits of cows (well, stock photos) and of the farm workers.

Brades Farm Dairy is just outside Lancaster.

Joe Towers

and his brother, Ed Towers.

Thomas Hafner, Mootral CEO and co-founder.

Yummy Mootral

A cow using a back-scratcher.

A lovely cow

(above and below) lots and lots more lovely cows.

Composition-aware cows

A big, scary bull