Amsterdam. Some people just look as if they’ve had an interesting life - I wish I’d had the nerve to ask him……….
Extraordinary day at the Bonhams Aston Martin auction on Saturday. When I bought my first car, a tatty, non running Austin Healey in 1983, a useable DB4 like this could be found for around ten grand. This one sold for £611,900. I could have bought the wheels but couldn’t quite see the point…….
A Tale of Two Yellows. Fabulous weather for outdoor shooting at the moment with the light changing all the time and it all worked perfectly for this shot of Little Barford power station for nPower last week. Once inside however the dreaded health and safety regulations mean that no one can even be seen without all their personal protection equipment, so very soon all location portraits in industrial situations will look the same. You can guess which yellow I prefer……………
The Glamour of Photography, Part 2: Foreign Travel.
Destination: Dusseldorf, Germany. Client: Fujifilm. Due on location at 0900. Flight Time: 0610. Collected by taxi at 0400. Alarm set for 0330…need I go on? The green chairs were cool but unfortunately neither big enough nor comfortable enough to sleep in. A three espresso day………..
Nannini in his cafe before the overtaking saga and posing nonchalantly afterwards in the Piazza del Duomo, having just driven past the sign saying “No Vehicles”, waving at a policeman who obviously knew who he was and parking right by the steps for my benefit. Mercedes Motorsport Magazine 1990
Why racing drivers are not like you and I
Imagine, if you will, that you are in the passenger seat of a Mercedes climbing the hill towards the ancient centre of Siena in Italy. At the wheel is Sandro Nannini, who after an horrific helicopter accident which resulted in his severed right arm having to be reattached by microsurgery, retired from F1 but carried on racing for Mercedes in the GT series. With maybe 200m to go before a sharp right hand bend and with a truck, followed by two or three cars, all ahead of us, Nannini decides to try and overtake them all. Halfway past the second car another vehicle comes around the corner in the opposite direction - there is now no longer enough time to complete the manoeuvre and at this point you or I would have sheepishly but firmly pushed back in behind the truck, hoping that an apologetic wave would pacify the driver behind. Nannini keeps his foot down. There is now no possibility of passing the truck in time and I am bracing my feet rather firmly on the floor. The oncoming driver is forced to stop and in the nick of time Nannini dives in between the truck and the now stationary oncoming car and rounds the bend with a small chuckle. That my friends, is the difference. Nannini now runs a chain of coffee shops with branches worldwide, which means that wherever you are, if you see a Mercedes coming towards you on the wrong side of the road and you’re wondering whether it’s going to pull in or go for broke, remember that it just might be Sandro at the wheel.
Spent a couple of days recently on the set of the forthcoming BBC / HBO thriller “Hunted” to do some Art Dept. stills to provide some of the “back story” for members of the cast. On set, the lighting boys do all the work and make it easy for people like me, but on location, making a wood near Guildford on a damp day in April look like Pakistan, is something of a challenge. British actress Meera Syal was on hand playing a potential Pakistani presidential candidate but, fittingly enough for someone with her track record for comedy, was not tempted to remain “in character” at all times.
Marrakech must be one of the most photographed places on earth. Some of the terrace bars overlooking the Djem el-Fna at dusk looked more like camera clubs than cafes with an arsenal of 80-200 mm zooms hosing down the scene from the safety of the first floor and at ground level pointing a camera of any sort will instantly attract a request for cash but away from the main square it’s still possible to shoot discreetly and quickly without any bother.
Back to the archives this week because I’m not allowed to show you what I’ve been up to……..Unusually, I arrived late for this shoot at West Ham’s training ground which is in the middle of the A13 / A12 wasteland and was shown into the room where the interview had already started. Ferdinand got up to shake my hand as I introduced myself, glanced at his watch and then said, completely deadpan, “try and turn up on time next time alright?”, before pausing for just long enough to make sure he’d got me and then laughing his head off. Fortunately for all his timing on the field was just as good…….
A couple of days of reportage for my new friends Bayard Presse in France meant dusting off my once fluent French to work with a couple of their journalists in London and the speaking was more exhausting than the photography by a long chalk. Our travels led us to the deepest recesses of the London College of Fashion where I found these feet……
Perhaps relocating the office to Clerkenwell Green wasn’t such a good idea after all. On the other hand, it’s Friday, the sun is shining and what is the point of being self employed unless you can organise your time according to the prevailing conditions………..in case you’re wondering, it’s Pips excellent Herefordshire Cider
Appropriately enough given the name, whenever I am sent to Portcullis House to shoot a portrait of an MP, my heart sinks a little with the knowledge that I will probably have five minutes in one of the rather cramped offices or have to take my chances in one of the corridors outside, a symphony of yellow wood and beige carpet which feels more like a Norwegian Spa than an government office..The view out of the window with the reflection of one of the distinctive “chimneys” was definitely the best thing about the job……….
It’s not all bad. Spent a day last week walking in the Quantock Hills in Somerset. Beautiful weather, lovely countryside, lunch in a country pub, walk back across the hills, more beer, night in a B&B and then on to Dorset. Had it not been for 3Kg of Nikon hardware on each shoulder it wouldn’t have felt like a job at all………..
Over the years I’ve had the opportunity to photograph many racing drivers and back in the early nineties I did a number of shoots with an up and coming Mercedes DTM driver from Scotland called Dario Franchitti, which were always good fun, including one where about four of us stayed in a German hotel room with one bed - I seem to remember Dario’s dad sleeping in the bath……Today he is the four times US Indy Car champion, married to the actress Lesley Judd and a massive star in the USA. I was lucky enough to get a half hour with him last year just before the Goodwood Festival of Speed for a shoot for Mercedes Magazine with an SLS that they had lent him for the weekend and we spent a few minutes laughing about the last time we met, for a shoot in Norfolk in 1995, the joke being that on that day he had the mother of all hangovers and I had made him run behind the camera car for some action shots before sitting him amongst a load of straw bales for the shot here while he was struggling to hold down his breakfast. I wonder where our paths will cross again……
