Ian Parry judging

Some quick snaps from the Ian Parry judging. (top) Philip Blenkinsop. (middle) Tom Stoddart throws a quick smirk to camera during an in-depth conversation with the Sunday Times Magazine picture editor Monica Allende. (bottom) Simon Roberts

Working on the Ian Parry Scholarship

I'm now back in London after a short stay in Paris over the last week. No sooner had I arrived back at my flat in London I got a call from the organisers of the Ian Parry scholarship asking if I wanted to drop by a say hello (not completely random - I was going to be working with them). I made my way to the frontline club in Paddington, but sadly missed the chance to meet Don McCullin who was one of the judges this year. Apparently he left about 5 minutes before I arrived. I did however get to meet some other legends including the photographers Tom Stoddart, Philip Blenkinsop, Simon Roberts and the Vice president of Getty and former Sunday Times Magazine picture editor, Aidan Sullivan. It turned out to be a really fascinating evening and I even managed to get some opinions on my work which was great. It made me realise just how subjective photography can be, with Philip really liking one picture whilst Tom would simply shrug past it and vice versa. Take for example the picture below:


Philip picked it out because he said that it wasn’t of anything in particular but that’s why he liked it; it was a moment, a quiet picture. But for Tom that was pretty much the exact reason for not liking it as much. These opinions probably reflect the background of the photographers and their own styles and influences. To be honest I wish I’d been recording the whole thing (the wine was flowing so I don’t think many people remember too much from the evening). It was just fantastic to be getting genuine compliments from some of my heroes.

Anyway they announced the winner – not sure if it’s public knowledge so I won’t give it away here, but I’ll just say that they got the call in airport as they were flying to London and rushed from the airport straight to the Frontline Club to a deserved welcome and congratulations.

I spent most of today at Getty’s London HQ (and will be spending most of tomorrow) scanning, colour correcting and captioning the winning images. I also got to have a coffee and a chat (and another chance to show work) to Aidan which was an added bonus.

Music Promo

A shoot I did for a string quartet who are just about to sign to a major label. Shot in The Grill ROom of The Cafe Royal, Regent Street London. In othe news I'm off to Paris in about an hour so updates may be a little slow over the next few days.

PR work

Dr Dionysios Stathakopoulos, Research Fellow, Department of Byzantine & Modern Greek Studies, Kings College London. Photographed after winning a Teaching Excellence Award. 15/06/2006

Lit with a brolly and a 580EX camera left, another 580EX to the right and slightly behind the subject, and a 420EX directly behind the statue.

London street

Can you believe that's the freemasons hall?! Almost as scary as the new scientology church...

Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks

The Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks on a visit to Kings College London where he gave a talk on religious education for a society diversity. 12/06/2007. Amazing chap to listen to, seems to have very sensible moderate views with a lot of time and respect for people of all beliefs, but also an incredibly passionate speaker, someone I've always had respect for. Here he was chatting to the Dean of King's College London who was just finishing telling a joke (hence the gesticulation!)

Ouch...

Good old 'use of reasonable force'....hmmm
These guys were taking part in a peaceful sit down protest, blocking a road around Heiligendamm, but the police moved in when the group was still small (presumably to stop it growing). The German police were pretty efficient...which I guess is what you'd expect.

G8 2007 - 'Rocking the Stock': Organised Anarchy

So these are some of the pics I took during the protests at G8 this year that was held in Heiligendamm, Germany. It’s always quite tough photographing riots or anything with a lot of action and emotion, to try and compress all the mayhem and energy into one frame I often find to be very hard. Of course riots like this are even worse because you have to be constantly aware of what’s going on around you in terms of flying debris and people high on aggression, so finding time to think about exposure and composition can be quite tricky! As it was I had a banger or something explode somewhere near my face (with the camera luckily taking most of the blow) and a brick on my shin (ouch). I think if I did more sports photography then I would probably be better at freezing the moments of action, a fast zoom lens also would have been handy at times. Capa’s rule of getting close is all very well and good but often the closer you get the harder it is to get a clean composition, especially when you haven’t got much to think about it. A Dutch photographer we were with, Dirk-Jan Visser, got an amazing photograph that seemed to really sum up the mayhem-it almost looked like street theatre (the photo can be found on the WpN website). I don’t think however that this time I really got one image that I was especially proud of. Nevertheless it was amazing to witness history as always and also to meet some great photographers over there. If you want to see more photos from G8 I should be putting some up on mw website soon, but in the meantime there is a set up online at my flickr account.

The G8

G82007_SIMG_1748, originally uploaded by greg_focus52.

So I mangaged to return from G8 in one piece...just about. Very interesting to cover and plenty of tales to tell. Went with my good friend David Azia who was working for WPN and met up with some great photographers out there, including some hilarious Dutch guys whom we spent a lot of time with-the camaraderie at these things make it all worthwhile. I did a set of portraits such as this one and they can be seen on my flickr account (which you can get to with the links on the right of this blog or just by clicking the picture). But also obviously shot the action and the riots which if you've been following the news you will know they were....lets just say quite 'fiesty'. I will posting those up when I get a bit more time, but for the moment I have a full weekend of shoots ahead of me.