Widelux: Ha Giang Province, Vietnam

I've started the slow process of scanning the negatives from Vietnam that I shot on a Widelux F7 film camera. The camera uses a rotating lens to get approximately 140 degrees field of view. This creates some interesting perspectives. The road in this image was actually on my left at about 9 o'clock and the mountain was probably at about my 2 o'clock, yet the cameras pulls it all into the image. I'll hopefully be posting more as and when I work on them.

A snap of myself and my traveling buddy Tom in Ha Giang, Vietnam, last month.

Vietnam - seascape

Portrait: Swoon, Street Artist

Towards the end of last year I was commissioned by HUCK magazine to photograph the American street artist, Swoon, who was in London for an exhibition installation. I must admit that I was aware of Swoon's work but didn't know much about her, yet immediately I knew how I wanted to photograph her. I'd recently purchased (another) old Polaroid camera, this time a Polaroid Automatic 100 that I'd picked up in Pasadena, Ca. I figured it would be a great opportunity for an experiment, an opportunity to make the portrait a true collaborative effort; I would shoot the image, and Swoon would illustrate on it however she so wished. Anyway above is the one in the ran in the magazine and below is another version that we produced.

Below, Swoon in the Black Rat Projects space where she had her installation.

Shooting the Queen

So before I disappeared off to Asia last month I had a rare opportunity, I was asked to photograph the Queen at an opening ceremony. I've always had respect to full-time Press Photographers who have to get decent images out of sometimes some dire situations...but I have even more respect for those that have to photograph the Royals. There are (understandably) so many parameters and rules to be aware of and the amount of pre-event planning is immense. Luckily I was working with some good people and I was able to get a good spot and few frames off before I was ushered out of the way. This double page spread is how it ran in the magazine.

So I'm back in the UK after my little jaunt around Hong Kong and Vietnam. The shot above is from a few days that I spent riding in the mountains close the Chinese border in the Ha Giang region of Vietnam - definitely a place I'd like to go back to. The whole trip was a great experience and again, as always, it was really made by the hospitality I received and the characters I met on the road. For the time being I'll be putting up some little gems from the journey here and there whilst continuing with other business as usual.