Recently, after many failed attempts, I was fortunate enough to go on a balloon flight over Berkshire. The evening weather as perfect as the breeze pushed us eastwards, towards Henley. On the way, we flew over a verdant forest, where a horse and rider momentarily materialised from between the trees as they crossed the bisecting path beneath us.
Hard to imagine that you are only 25 miles from London at moments like this.
Following on from my last shot of the day on August 10th, this shot was take a few hours earlier at Ayrmer Cove, just as the sun was setting behind the peninsula. The magic of the moment was having this entire beautiful scene to myself, something that rarely happens at sunset.
I had originally intended to photograph one of my favourite beaches in southern Devon but it was the wrong time of year for the sunset across the opening of the cove. Instead, I retraced my steps by a few miles to Ayrmer Cove and waited until around half an hour after the sun dropped below the horizon, to capture this long exposure shot.
Another early rise shot on Dawlish Warren. The clouds had meant the sunrise was not as spectacular as I had hoped, so I tried my Lee Big Stopper. This created the pleasant softening of the clouds and water. It also added a blue cast to the image, which I chose to preserve.
Second trip to the quayside in Lyme Regis in Dorset earlier this year to catch the morning light, which, as can be seen above, did not appear. It was, however, windswept, cold and rained, so a thoroughly rewarding experience nonetheless…
A shot from earlier this year on a very cold Easter morning, it was taken on the southern Devon coastline, close to Exmouth.
In early April, I managed a team at Kin Design, who had been engaged by M&C Saatchi to create a large digital interactive installation for Adidas.
Over the following 7 weeks, my team created bespoke content for the inaugural Adidas Lab event in London. Within two months, we created viable concepts, designed and animated them, built the system to house the event both physically and programmatically and tested it for the live date of May 24th. The pressure was on as the Adidas CEO (Herbert Hainer) and CMO (Hermann Deininger) were using the event to officially launch some key technical developments that Adidas have been working on over the last year or two.
The press conference hosted by Herbert Hainer also had two famous footballers in the guise of Zinedine Zidane & Michael Ballack to support the Adidas Lab event. Both players tried out installations that my team had worked on.
The three key elements that my team created were the following:
(1) The Track
This was an interactive 20m track that users ran up and down three times, to identify which Adidas boot was most appropriate for them. Each of the three stages related to a different skill; speed, agility and control. We also integrated a real time video capture and render system into the track that used the RFID tag in data to upload the user’s video to the Adidas YouTube channel and post an update on their preferred social media channel of this video and their result (overall score and boot preference).
See an example of one of the thousand plus user videos below.
(2) MiCoach
We created an interactive picture based installation that users could look through as they watched a video that outlined the latest Adidas tech in MiCoach, where player movements were tracked on an iPad through a chip in the player’s kit.
(3) SmartBall Wall
Adidas created a ball that could transmit speed, bend and flight trajectory to an iPhone App. My team created a large screen for users to kick the ball against. At the top of the screen we installed a scanning laser to define where the ball hit the screen and trigger an animation. The App data was passed through AirPlay and shown on the screen to allow views to see the data on the iPhone screen.
Overall, the event was a great success and we are looking into opportunities to create future Adidas Lab events.
Here are a few more images from the Adidas Lab 2013:
Here are some links about the film in the press:
Adidas: http://blog.adidas-group.com/2013/05/the-adidas-lab-%E2%80%93-a-glimpse-into-the-future-of-football/
Adidas News Stream: http://news.adidas.com/GB/PERFORMANCE/adidas-lab/s/72842690-7f6d-4a25-8101-862845d99283
Engadget: http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/24/adidas-labs/
Soccerbible: http://www.soccerbible.com/news/general/archive/2013/05/21/competition-win-adidas-innovation-event-tickets.aspx
UK Sports Network: http://www.theuksportsnetwork.com/adidas-lab-showcases-the-future-of-football
Pop Sop: http://popsop.com/62987
Several years ago, I spent a couple of weeks on the road in Namibia. This was before digital photography had taken off (still prohibitively expensive), so I was armed with my trust Canon T90 and long lens as I intended to shoot wildlife photography. However, on day 2 of my 15 day trip, whilst I sat in Etosha Park waiting for the animals and lighting conditions to align at the watering hole, my camera electrics suffered a catastrophic meltdown (literally) at the hands of the African midday sun.
All I had left was a £20 Lubitel 6×6 camera, 10 roles of Fuji Provia and my father’s 40 year old light meter As it turned out, that was all I needed. Over a decade later and I still love the analogue nature of these shots, all captured on a camera with a super cheap lens.
On an icy cold Thursday and Friday in January, as the snow fell and the temperatures tumbled below zero, I was on the set of a Guinness shoot, to celebrate St Patrick’s Day this March 17th 2013.
The team was made up of our Guinness client, creatives from Saatchi, Michael Sugerman (Director) and Production team from Holster, my team from Tribal, a live action / post production team from Rushes, as well as the assembled cast and crew.
The complexity of the shoot was based on the fact that we were interjecting personalised elements into the experience and therefore had to carefully choreograph the key sequences that my post production team at Luma could then create assets from and pass them over to the render farm team at Crystal CG / Hoopers.
One point of interest was that the bar set we used was from the hit TV comedy ‘Only Fools and Horses’.
The final output is available on Facebook: http://bit.ly/GuinnessPaintYourTownBlack
Here are a few behind the scenes images I managed to grab whilst on the two day shoot.
Here are some links about the film in the press:
Marketing: http://www.marketingmagazine.co.uk/news/1173008/Guinness-unveils-St-Patricks-Weekend-marketing-drive/
The Drum: http://www.thedrum.com/news/2013/02/26/guinness-invites-world-paint-town-black-st-patricks-day
IBB Online: http://lbbonline.com/news/guinness-paint-the-town-black/
More About Advertising: http://www.moreaboutadvertising.com/2013/03/saatchi-paints-the-town-black-for-guinness/
All Terrain Photography 