An absolute pleasure :o)

Earlier on this afternoon I was round at my great friends & neighbours, Steve & Edwina Harris for a family portrait shoot; this time with Edwina's side of the family which included her parents and her sister & family.

As is always the case, time spent in Steve & Edwina's company was a total pleasure ... and yet again, I was introduced to family members who were incredibly friendly and great fun to work with. I reckon we spent just over an hour or so taking a mixture of family photos with a few individual portraits in the garden; all that remains now is to look through them all and add some finishing touches.

Thanks guys ... I thoroughly enjoyed myself and yeah we must all get together for a bite to eat and a drink or two, very soon :o)

Urban Photo Shoot

During one of the evenings last week I met up with Chris & Meilu Thomas in Windsor, to go through a 'practice' photo shoot. The reason behind this was that in the near future I'm hoping to be taking photographs of Meilu in her Wedding dress which is all part of the work I'm doing with Oxygen Hair & Beauty Salon in Beaconsfield.

After a quick drink in Browns' we then headed off round the corner to an industrial area for just over an hour or so to take some 'urban' style photos of Meilu ... who I must say is a complete natural infront of the camera.

Big thankyou to Chris & Meilu who were great to work with; very relaxed, open minded and good fun :o)

Pride of Britain - Frank Samaras

The Pride of Britain Awards, is the biggest national event that celebrates our 'unsung heroes' and this year will be attended by HRH Prince Charles, the Prime Minister Gordon Brown and a host of celebrities from all arenas. One of the finalists this year is a good friend of mine, Frank Samaras; an incredible humble and kind human being who's actions back in November 2006 to save the lives of several members of the public, could have very easily cost him his own.


Frank is a Paramedic with the London Ambulance Service and back in November 2006 responded to what everyone would have thought as a 'normal' call; however that couldn't be further from the truth as moments after arriving Frank found himself fighting for his life when he was savagely attacked by a deranged man who had already killed one other at the scene. Despite incapacitating injuries Frank still found it in him to protect passersby, which in turn caused him to sustain another frenzied attack.

I feel incredibly honoured to call Frank a friend and to see him being recognised for his courage on that night is wonderful. Anyone who knows Frank would certainly agree that he is a very humble man and finds all this attention very hard to comprehend as he considers his actions not to be heroic .. he just couldn't standby and watch someone being attacked.


Frank, despite how you may feel, you are a hero. I wonder how many others could have acted as you did on that night. Sure, there are plenty of people out there that can 'talk a good job' but when it comes to it ... can they deliver? All I know is that if someone dear to me was in need of help, it's you whom I would want to be there.

*NB ... voting is open between the 19th September and the 22nd September and will be on this page, so be sure to cast one in Frank's direction :o)

Airport Commission

This past week I got to do something a little different ... a commercial piece of work that not only involved photography but also some graphic design. The commission was from Heathrow Police in conjunction with BAA (British Airports Authority) and the brief was to create a series of posters that would inform travelling passengers through Heathrow about the potential consequences of carrying sharps / knives in their hand luggage.

Right ... now back to some photography :o)

Congratulations Richard & Amy

Well I've not long got back from another trip 'Up North'. This time along with my mate Mark, I was photographing the Wedding of the now Mr & Mrs Richard Taylor. The day started off with me photographing Richard at his home address along with his ushers and best man, whilst Mark photographed Amy at her parents'. Then it was off to the All Saints Church in Berwick in Elmet for the ceremony and finally the reception and evening celebrations at the Thorpe Park Hotel & Spa in Leeds, Yorkshire.


As seems to be the 'norm' lately, the weather has been wet to say the least, but amazingly it stopped for the Wedding which gave the opportunity for some outdoor shots that we didn't think we'd get. Richard and Amy, along with their guests, were great to work with; very relaxed and extremely helpful which made photographing their big day a joy.

Oxygen 'Hair Up' Shoot

Last Tuesday I was over at Oxygen Hair & Beauty Salon in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire to take the 'Hair Up' shots that are going to be used in their promotional material. I got there at around 5.30pm and found Phil, the head stylist and his team busy working on some models that had kindly volunteered their own time to help out. During the course of the evening which finished around about 9pm, I took some 270 shots from differing angles, of the different hair up styles that the team had created.

Overall a very successfull night for everyone concerned, made even better by the free flowing Bucks Fizz and selection of Pizzas provided by Angelo, the owner/manager.

The Ultimate Driving Machine

Carrying on with my portrait project, here's one of the shots I took yesterday of a friend of mine, Johnny Woodiss-Field.

Now, the image I've attached to this blog entry isn't one that I'll be using in my project cos they're all gonna be having the same post production treatment as the photo of Steve Harriss, in an earlier post; this one though I just couldn't resist making up. Johnny is a qualified instructor in just about every advanced driving course / technique going so I thought it apt to use the logo once used by BMW ... "The Ultimate Driving Machine" ... all in the name of fun of course :o)

Ongoing Portrait Project

I always like to have a few projects to work on in between photography jobs and one of the ones I have running at the moment is all about faces. It's an ongoing project that quite simply will be finished when I feel I've taken enough photos (maybe around 25). The photos are all going to be of men's faces ... expressionless and staring straight into the lens, and what I'd like to do at the end of it is to arrange all of them in roughly a 5x5 grid. There's no particular reason or purpose behind it other than it'll be interesting to see so many varied faces, all shot with the same lighting and style in one place.

I guess you can learn alot about someone by the things they get up to in their spare time huh :o)


This shot ... the first one taken for the project, is of my good friend and neighbour Steve, who you may recall I took a photo of with his motorbike some weeks back. Click here