Tilting and Shifting - Part I

In November, I was blessed with a lush financial shower; Or rather, a whole bunch of late-paying clients decided to finally cough up and there was, for once, money in my account. Of course it didn't stay there for long - I'm a photographer after all, and none the wiser with money than I ever was. So I did what I always do when feeling flush: spend some !

I splashed out on a second-hand, 90mm tilt and shift lens from Canon, courtesy of my friend Adrian Arbib who has kept it in immaculate condition. It completes my set of odd lenses, as I am the proud of owner of the 24mm, 45mm, and now also the 90mm. A great set if you want to experiment with quirky portraits, impossibly shallow (or deep, i.e. shifted) focal planes, straight vertical lines, and landscapes that look like they're from Legoland. I have only started exploring the possibilities, but find the first results worthy of a blog post. What do you think?

Fire on the beach

Perhaps a strange tradition, but a modern tradition nonetheless. After the usual Christmas debauchery of too much turkey, cookies and other delights, a group of people gathers at the south beach in Eckernfoerde on the Baltic Sea coast to light a fire. They drink mould wine and bake 'stockbrot', or twist bread over the open flames. It's a pleasant and delicious affair only marginally thwarted by the cold wind and snowfall that sets in as the night progresses. Nevermind, we all had a good time!

Mr Christmas

This blog post is somewhat apt for the season: a portrait assignment of a somewhat excentric English character, the self-proclaimed Mr Christmas. Andy Park, a 45-year-old divorced electrician, has been celebrating Christmas full time, i.e. every day since July 1994.

Apart from going to work in the morning, he consumes a roast turkey, champagne and toasts to the Queen's speech punctually at 3 pm every day, Sherry in hand. Over the years, he has consumed 5000-odd turkeys, nearly 118,000 brussel sprouts, and about 5000 bottles of Moet champagne. An odd diet, and a bit one-sided for my taste. But nevermind what one might think of the lunacy of daily Christmas celebrations, Mr Park was very open and cooperative and let me photograph him pretty much any way I liked. So here goes a small slideshow of our visit.

Blitzing Sarah Jessica Parker

Yes folks, *that* Sarah Jessica Parker. Y'know, the one a million of girls want to be, the same one a million guys would love to date. Y'know, the one who played Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and the City, and who is in town promoting her latest movie where she plays somebody else I can't remember just now.

Our shoot was - as always with these showbiz interview gigs - sweet and brief. She was tired but talkative, the PR and studio people - as usual - very busy and above all, important. So I got my 60 seconds, perhaps a little more, and my client the pictures. Everybody happy, and that's the main thing - and here a few to make you happy...

Darling cut the crap

Last night I had the pleasure of working for my favourite environmental organisation again. This time, Greenpeace projected a message onto Big Ben at the Houses of Parliament in Westminster, London.

At approximately 3am, on the eve of the government's pre-budget report, Greenpeace added to the mounting calls to re-evaluate Trident replacement by sending a 100 foot high message to Chancellor Alistair Darling, projected onto Big Ben. The projection reads 'Darling….Cut the crap' with an image of a Trident missile with its £97 billion life-time price tag.

Back into the corporate world

I've barely returned from far too long in a tiny village in the hills in eastern Europe, and I am ushered into one of the world's largest media companies HQ. The brief: a clean, sympatico portrait of its editor-in-chief, David Schlesinger of ThomsonReuters.

It's a small world. Ten years ago, I worked for the then wire service Reuters News Pictures, and David ran the Americas operations. Now I am freelance, and he is the overall boss and a committed journalist with an open mind set towards the future. We traded some names, I found out about some of my old colleagues' whereabouts and David was kind enough to give me the email address of my former boss. Saying hello cannot hurt, and I must admit that a certain - albeit very slight - nostalgia has crept in somewhere. After all, this is the place where I learned my trade, and I am forever grateful for that opportunity.

So yes, back to the picture. The room was practically dark, but the background of the photo had to be crisp white. So applying a little trickery in the form of a new photoshop layer could not be avoided, no matter how over the top I set the background flash bouncing off the white wall behind David. The shoot was uncomplicated, speed and accuracy was of the essence, just like in the old wire service days.