New Work For Essex & Herts Air Ambulance Trust

I’m proud to be able to share some recent work commissioned for the Essex & Herts Air Ambulance Trust (EHAAT) by Simplify.

I received a call from Simplify’s MD, Neil Quidington, to ask if I’d be interested in working with his agency to elevate the EHAAT photography, in particular the portraits required for their upcoming 2022 annual review.

We spent two days at the EHAAT North Weald airbase, making a mixture of portrait and reportage photographs of the amazing ground staff, pilots, paramedics and doctors, who are based there.

It was truly humbling to witness first hand what these amazing people do and to hear the stories of what they face on a daily basis. On more than one occasion, we would be set up to make a picture and then a pager would suddenly sound and the crew would be up and gone.

You can find out much more about EHAAT, including ways of supporting this vital charity, here.

Below is just a small selection of the portrait work that we made, with more examples to be found here.

Client : EHAAT. Agency : Simplify. AD : Neil Quidington.

Highways England Portraits

Back in January I received a call from a client who had moved to Highways England. She asked if I’d be interested in helping them create a collection of location portraits that represented the various arms of Highways England, and that would illustrate the diverse nature of the company and its people.

We spent six days on the road and covered hundreds of miles, shooting in a variety of fascinating locations across the UK. The resulting images have already been used across a large range of publications, including the annual report and accounts.

Client : Highways England.

Below is a small selection of the portraits that we made, with larger versions to be found here.

Enigma - New Work for Bletchley Park

Further new work for Bletchley Park is now live, commissioned by the good folk at Rose Design. 

I was asked to photograph the Enigma machine. It was both fascinating and a privilege spending time with such a historically significant piece of equipment, one which was indirectly responsible for saving so many lives through the cracking of it's code. 

Bletchley Park is the home of the World War II Codebreakers. There’s so much world changing history that’s been made here, it is a truly fascinating place. I’d recommend that anyone with an interest in World War II, coding or code breaking, spend a day here.

Client : Bletchley Park.    Agency : Rose Design.    AD : Garry Blackburn.

One of the ads is shown below, with more of the work available to see here.

Ad Campaign For Network Rail

The lovely folk at 23red, commissioned me to shoot a series of atmospheric ads for Network Rail, for their Midland Mainline Safety poster campaign.

The imagery had to be used across 6, 48 and 98 sheet sites, and so I chose to shoot on my ALPA 12 MAX and PhaseOne IQ MFDB combo, in order to achieve the largest possible file size and resolution.

A big thank you to the Network Rail safety team that watched our bright orange backs, while we worked.

Client : Network Rail.    Agency : 23red.    AD : Tristan Cavanagh & Tom Mann.

Below are 3 of the 48 sheet ads..   

New Work For GE Oslo

New work for GE is now live.

The GE Oslo shoot was a perfect example of a team effort. We were working under reasonably tight time and location constraints, shooting real people in their busy working environments, and so we had to remain as flexible as possible. Working with an experienced and flexible art director meant we could quickly explore visual ideas as they presented themselves, and working with a seasoned production crew meant we could work unhindered, knowing everything was at hand.. and all I had to do was think about making the pictures. It was a memorable shoot, and for all the right reasons.

Some kind words from Seven Stones’ creative director, Justin Earl.. “Working in Oslo with Julian and his team on this four-day shoot was an absolute pleasure. He knew exactly what we wanted to achieve with each shot, shooting in some very challenging industrial spaces. The brief for this shoot was about capturing the characters and stories of real employees and we did exactly that, thanks to the way Julian made everyone feel very much at home in front of his camera.”

Client : GE.    Agency : Seven Stones.    AD : Justin earl.

Below is a small selection of the work we made, with more examples available here.

3 month Production for Virgin Media Business

Last year we were comissioned to shoot a library of images for Virgin Media Business. Now the product is launched we can finally talk about it.

The production spanned 3 months in total (60 working days) - from sign-off to final delivery of images.

Casting - we cast approximately 400 models over 3 days, in order to find a total of 68 people (47 adult models, 5 child models, 6 teens, 2 policemen, 5 firemen & 3 extras)

Locations - we scouted and permitted 14 locations over 23 days.. A hospital reception, an x-ray room, a school, 5 x offices with server rooms, a modern house, a civic centre, a recycling plant, an empty industrial space to park our fire engine, a roundabout on an A-road to park the police car, car parks and loading bays to park engineers vans etc.

Styling - the stylist, Natasha Freeman, had to work solidly for 25 days gathering all of the relevant wardrobe & prop items for this shoot. To name but a few...90 different outfits & accessories, server cabinets, computers, telephones, head-sets, plants, garden furniture, desks, tables and much more...

Travel - We hired mini buses, winnebagos, a cherry picker, dust carts, JCB’s, a police car, a fire engine.. oh, and a Land Rover.. you name it, we had it! 

Catering - over 200 mouths were fed over the period of the shoot, that’s a lot of food!

Agency : Design UK.    Art Director : Pieter Van Loon.    Stylist : Natasha Freeman @ LPA/Style.   Hair & make-up : Hannah Marshall @ LPA /Style.    Shoot production : Holly Brooks @ LPA/Production. 

Below is selection of imagery from the shoot, with larger versions here.