Author: Zapfly

Boeing Dreamspace photography – Work from the archive

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Boeing Dreamspace 10

Sometimes I end up doing vary varied tasks for different projects. Whilst based at PCI Fitch, I was the agency photographer and one of the jobs I covered was the Farnborough Airshow in 2006.  The design team had created the Boeing Dreamscape interior at the air show, which I shot for Boeing.  It was a delightful mixture of physical installation and digital elements.

Here are some images of the space.

Main installation room
Client space
Interactive flight simulator
Life size model of aircraft
Entrance pathway
Main installation room
Main installation room
Main installation room

Canada photoshoot 2011

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Just prior to the Frankfurt motorshow in September, I went out to Canada for a two week photoshoot.  Starting off in Calgary, I headed west to Banff National Park.  From here, I drove through all the surrounding national parks including Kootenay, Yoho and Jasper.  Over the first ten days, I covered almost 2000 miles.

After returning to Calgary, I then flew further west to Victoria, capital of Vancouver Island.  My good friend Justene Miller, a Canadian from Vancouver, gave me some excellent advice, to visit Tofino and Ucluelet, on the Pacific coast of the island.  I was treated to a cloud rainbow, something I have never seen before.

I loved Canada, with its spectacular landscape and friendly locals. My only reservation is that the food is much like the US is pretty awful most of the time.

Honda at Frankfurt 2011 motorshow

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For several months leading up to the Frankfurt 2011 motorshow, I executive produced the Honda stand with an excellent team at Wieden & Kennedy.  Creative directing the stand was Tom Seymour and David Bruno.  You can see more of their work on their website www.davidandtom.co.uk.

Collaborating with a production company just outside of Frankfurt, Germany, a Belgian artist based in Marseille and Honda clients based across Europe and Japan, we designed, built and implemented a stand for Honda in less than 4 months from start to finish.  The design was meant to visual representation of the roads to zero emissions for the motor show, one of Honda’s key cornerstone values.

The stand was covered by the full breadth of auto press and design magazines, including Wallpaper (who used one of my images).

Here are more images of the stand I took for Wieden + Kennedy’s press releases.

Links for further information on the stand:

  1. Campaign
  2. Wieden & Kennedy website
  3. W+K blog entry 1
  4. W+K blog entry 2
  5. David Bruno & Tom Seymour coverage
  6. Creativity
  7. Video coverage
  8. The Drum

Where are the Joneses – Work from the archive

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One of the most demanding projects I have lead was for Ford, whilst I was based at Imagination.  I was brought on board to create a far reaching social media platform, at the time when WordPress and Wikis were still very much in their infancy from a public consciousness perspective.

Ford wanted to utilise social media to engage with people in a more genuine manner than just pitch sales messages and thereby establish a closer connection between audience and brand.

WRTJ 3

The aim of the project was to tell a  story and inviting readers to contribute to it, thus making them feel engaged, rather than “talked at”.

The result was an interactive online comedy called “Where Are The Joneses?”, which followed the adventures of two characters, Dawn and Ian Jones, who were searching for siblings after learning that their father was a prolific sperm donor.

Accompanied by my film crew, the cast improvised an episode a day on a 3 month European road-trip.  We asked Ford to provide a car fit for the journey and paint it in the pantone derived from the colour used by Seth Godin’s book, Purple Cow, about transforming your business by being remarkable.

WRTJ 7

Each episode was uploaded to our WRTJ channel on YouTube and discussed in an accompanying blog, hosted on WordPress, which featured videos from viewers, images, diaries written by the characters and audience comments. (www.wherearethejoneses.com)

The wiki allowed the audience to help shape the storyline, write the script, create new characters and even cast themselves to appear in the show. It was distributed widely across social networking sites to maximise audience participation, utilising everything from Facebook to Twitter, GoogleMaps, Flickr, Digg, Technorati, Del.icio.us, iTunes and MySpace amongst others.

WRTJ 16

The result was extensive coverage in mainstream media, both UK national and trade press as well as national TV coverage.  This helped to set the campaign up as a rewarding articulation of Ford’s brand positioning “Feel the difference.  It also earned the project a Webby nomination.

This is Episode 1 that started the whole European adventure off and introduced us to Dawn and Ian.

Here are some images from the three month production.

Ian reacts well to Dawn’s news
He’s got the whole world in his arms
Message in a bottle
Safe packaging for travel
Dawn has a moment
Taking a sideways look at the problem
Dawn at the wheel of her Ford
Dawn contemplating her next move
Have you seen my father?
Advertising for their lost father
Radio interview for Ian and Dawn in Madrid
How many kids?
Face paint fun
Dawn in disguise

24Photography 2011

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For the second year running, I have been part of the 24Photography artist’s group, an annual photography exhibition documents New Year’s Day. As usual, the exhibition opened on 24th February.  This year, there were around 500 people in attendance, with representation from various London newspapers.

As one of the photographers involved, we have embarked on an ambitious project that will span a generation, creating a pictorial social documentary to record what New Year’s Day represents – not only as a one off event – but also as an on-going and developing catalogue of what the end of one year and beginning of another comes to represent over time.

For my entry this year, I wanted to prove to myself that my work was not about the technology but what you do with it.  So, I chose to shoot all of my work on a Nokia N8 phone.  None of the guests could believe that a phone was able to take such clear images.

The exhibition is running for 24 days in Berkeley Square, Mayfair.  Nearest tube station is Green Park.  Please pop along and take a look.

Useful links:
24Photography website: http://www.24photography.org/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/24photography
Facebook group: http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php?gid=6072707497
Facebook event information: http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=181781975193369

Listings:

  1. Professional Photographer
  2. Telegraph Arts & Entertainment
  3. Hotshoe International
  4. Time Out
  5. Flavorpill
  6. What’s On Guide
  7. Aesthetica Magazine
  8. Artslant
  9. Art Calendr
  10. Evening Standard
  11. IndieLondon
  12. The List

Printed Press:

  • Mayfair Times
  • AOP  IMAGE
  • IN London – Highlight of the Month
  • Amateur Photographer Magazine
  • Evening Star – Double Page Spread
  • Ham and High Express
  • EADT – Double page Spread Photo Essay
  • Hammersmith and Kensington Times
  • Hackney Gazette
  • Westminster Chronicle

South America photoshoot

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For the final few weeks of 2010, as the UK was freezing in the mid-winter snow, I was in sunny Argentina, shooting for various image libraries.  I have included a few of these images from the various places I visited in late November and early to mid December.

As luck would have it, my flight was one of the very first to make it back into Heathrow, once they were finally able to clear the runway, which was very jammy indeed!


Sailing across the Beagle Channel close to Ushuaia, moment s after a snow blizzard


Walking around the edge of Lago Colorado in the Bolivian Atacama desert


Leap of faith 4,500m up in the Atacama desert


Train graveyard in the Salar de Uyuni, just south of town


Horse riding gaucho style in the hills surrounding Salta, Argentina

Day 15: Hvolsvollur to Reykjavik

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The last day of the trip and the weather was against me straight from the off.  As I sat in the café, preparing myself for the day ahead, I could see the clouds circling above me.  As I cycled out of Hvolsvollur, a wicked cross wind caught me, tossing me into the middle of the road.  Fortunately for me, there was not much traffic on the road so I was not in any jeopardy.

The rest of the morning’s cycle to Selfoss was miserable.  On one occasion, after being pushed into the centre of the road, in the path of on coming traffic, I was forced to dismount and push my cycle up the hill as the cross winds were so fierce and dangerous.  This very much set the tone or the remainder of the day.

The intermittent spots of rain did little to raise my spirits.  However, after turning due west, the wind fell behind me for the final 20km stretch for the morning and ensured that I was able to match the pace of the previous day’s ride.  Before I knew it, I rode into Selfoss.

Reluctant to frequent the same greasy establishments that are peppered all around the ring road of Iceland, I chanced upon a lovely small café.  The place was empty and the young owner welcomed me in with a warm smile.  Lunch was very pleasant but I was warned that there was a mountain range that I had to cycle over before I made it to Reykjavik.

It took me an hour in more vicious side winds to make it 20km to Hveragerði.  There in front of me stood the mother of all inclines.  The route up was perilous for several reasons.  Firstly, the cross winds were extremely hazardous, pushing me out into the road many times.  There was no hard shoulder on my side of the road; instead, the upward route was divided into a dual carriageway.  Large vehicles hurtled past me as they climbed the hill at alarming velocities.  The final problem was the intense, unrelenting incline.  The hill stretched out for an eternity ahead of me.

After crossing the road, I pushed my heavily laden bike up the unyielding ascent.  Cars came far too close for comfort on more than one occasion.  I did however, manage to conquer the hill eventually, crossing back over and pedalling once the camber eased a little.  The battle of gradient and cross wind raged on against my onward progress.  I swore at the wind as the hard shoulder disappeared completely.  I had to choose between the road and the terrifying traffic that adorned it or the sandy, rocked waste that lay just beyond it.

Progress was extremely slow and arduous.  I began to loose my cycling mojo and decided to stop at the next petrol station.  As I sat nursing a bottle of coke, I made a deal with myself that I would load my bike and good self on to a bus should one happen to pass by.  It didn’t and in hindsight, I am eternally grateful.  To have given up so close to the end of my journey would have endured and bugged me forever.

The petrol station owner told me the road got better and he was right.  Soon after leaving, the road began to descent, the cross winds soon subsided to infrequent gusts rather than perpetual gale and the hard shoulder reappeared.  I spotted Reykjavik in the distance.  I know at that point I was going to be fine.  Iceland had not defeated me after all.

A few hours later after becoming lost in the suburbs of capital city, terrified on the tri-carriage ways, bemused by the maze of roads in the docks and perplexed by the general lack of signage, I arrived in the middle of town.  I sensed a slow bubbling of euphoria n my heat as I booked into a pleasant local hotel.  Luck was on my side that evening.  The sunset was stupendous, the hotel extremely comfortable, dinner scrumptious and sleep deep and restful.  I had done it.  I had cycle around Iceland.

Please support Kids First Trust by sponsoring Julien on his Just Giving Page

Events Team
Kids First Trust

Meet the Iceland 2010 team: Julien

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Finally, the last member of the team is me.

I have been an ardent cyclist for years, braving the London commute on two wheels for over a decade. I have several war wounds to prove this as London motorists and pedestrians are a careless bunch sometimes.

From an expedition perspective, I have had a few adventures in my time. Last year I cycled 4200km to Nordkapp, the most northern point in Norway and indeed, Europe. The year before, I cycled from Lands End to John O’Groats. Other outdoor pursuits include rock climbing, mountaineering, trekking, sailing and so forth in lots of interesting place around the world.

I am fortunate enough to have a good excuse in that being a photographer, it is all part of my day job. I am not sure if anyone believes this but what the heck, it works for me.

When I am not in the wilderness, I am an online specialist and have been privileged to have worked at many of London’s finest agencies, including The Team, Blsat Radius, Head London, Endemol and Imagination to name but a few.

In recent weeks, I have been cycling around 120 miles a week in preparation for this ride. However, there is no experience like being out on the open road and Iceland has long been a dream of mine. I just hope that Angelique and Dave do not want to kill me for dragging them to the Island of Ice and Fire (or is that Tierra del Fuego?).

My other preparations for this trip include trying to part you generous people from your cash by way of sponsorship and fund raising. In fact, rather than dismantling my bike for the flight next Saturday today, I have been writing to lots of newspapers, magazines and companies to see if I can rustle up any interest to back the expedition and the Kids First Trust. So, if you have a fiver in your pocket burning a hole, please do donate to a most worthwhile cause at my Just Giving page.

Welcome to Team Iceland 2010.

Meet the Iceland 2010 team: Angelique

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My other riding partner this year is Angelique.

She is Canadian, living in California and has also done big bike rides of a different sort. Washington DC to Costa Rica on a BMW 750 for starters (no pedals). No motorbikes on this one though!

Angelique has always been into road and mountain biking and flirting with the idea of touring but like Dave, has never done it, so she’s ‘way psyched’ as they say in the San Fran vernacular. She’s on an endless prep schedule, antagonising bike shops all over the Bay Area, to help her convert her mountain bike’s to a touring bike. Good luck!

Angelique has several other great outdoor passions. Earlier this year, she went climbing in Thailand and kitting in the Philippines.  She’s a big fan of remote, exercised filled adventures like canoeing down the Zambezi.  I feel like a lightweight in comparison as I did the Zambezi in an eight man dingy back in 1994.

We’ll both be hauling Canon 5DII’s as she’s also a very keen photographer. She’ll be bringing along her 17-40 for the ride.  I’ll post some of her images as well, if she lets me.

Finally, Angelique just took ownership of her first dog, Ziggy, an 8 week old German Shepherd, who she will be abandoning to come on this trip.  That’s how great it’s going to be 🙂