Blog
… Finally receiving some new business cards, lovely 600gsm paper, thanks MOO!
Not much news to post other than that. I am still working as a Digital Operator for Graham Atkins Hughes in studio up in Old Street, on the big Interiors commission (just wrapped up week 3), and doing other freelance jobs over the weekend. The team is absolutely lovely, and really not looking forward to the end!
On the geeky side, I have the privilege of using a PhaseOne P45 back with Hasselblad body every day, on a fully spec’ed Macbook Pro and Eizo screen running CaptureOne Pro 6, as well as 9x ProFoto heads, 3x 2400 and 2x 1200 Pro-8 Packs, bunch of flag stands, accessories and anything I can imagine or would ever need. You really get what you pay for, not a single light failure so far, computer running nicely and backed up to RAID drives after every shot, pics transferred over to Holly the Art Director and imported into InDesign layout.
Beautiful workflow. That is all until next week!
Photographer: Ben McDade
Digital Operator / Lighting Assistant: Laimonas Stasiulis
This was the first shoot I worked on with Ben. We met at Location 18, Perseverance Works, a studio he manages which is located in rather fashionable Shoreditch. In fact he built it from an abandoned site, and transformed it into an incredible studio space, with every table / wardrobe on wheels so everything can be moved with ease. Oh did I mention he was co-creator of Big Sky back in the days? You can tell he had some experience…
The shoot was all using continuous light, 1x 5k HMI and 2x 2.2k’s. The big one is little heavy, you should see the size of it… The right technique of getting it on a double wind up came in useful, which I learned after I lifted it on by myself! (Thanks Ben).
After all was set, I was doing Digital Operating on CaptureOne Pro 6, with a mixture of tethered shooting and importing cards from shots taken outside, on a rooftop white cove. Another one of Ben’s genius creations!
I guess a photo speaks a thousand words, but here’s a few anyway… This month has been and will be rather busy, in fact it doesn’t look like I have any days off for almost a month straight! Every weekday I have been working with Graham Atkins Hughes on a massive interior commission for B&Q in a studio in Old Street, while weekends are various other jobs around London and the North, and processing / retouching when I’m home.
Oh, all that while flat hunting! I’m not complaining though, a month (or even longer) for a freelancer is more than rare, and much welcomed. Bring it on! A nice holiday after this is a must.
Photographer: Simon Webb
Digital Operator / Lighting Technician: Laimonas
Shot a while back on top of Blue Fin building in London. Incredible views, and we got this just in time before the rain started! One Direction have been doing rather well in the US, as are The Wanted!
Photographer: Ben McDade
Digital Operator: Laimonas Stasiulis
Client: FHM
It was one of those 3am wake-up calls, night bus to Tottenham Court Road to meet the crew at FHM HQ, load up equipment and drive all the way to Bristol through rain and sleet. We had two setups for this shoot, one using FilmGear HMI’s, another with ProFoto Air D1 Air 1000 heads to quickly swap and get distinctive looks. Using continuous light is not something a lot of Photographers do these days, but Ben is certainly renowned for it in the industry, which is refreshing to be on one of his shoots.
Dappy was extremely friendly and humble, down to earth guy, not something I personally expected, but then again that goes for most of the “infamous” people I tend to meet. Pleasure to work with!
Chess London have launched their new online shop few days ago, and all images have been shot by the fantastic Duncan Nicholls. Scroll down to view backstage shots when I was Digital Operator on the massive 3 day shoot at Holborn Studios!
Photographer: Simon Webb
Digital Operator / Lighting Assistant: Laimonas Stasiulis
Client: TV Buzz Magazine
OK so by now this is certainly not “news”, however at the time it was quite exciting (being someone who watches one or two Eastenders episodes…), as nobody knew that Preeya (AKA Amira) was making a come back. We had great fun at the shoot, swinging baseball bats and destroying really nice wedding cakes!! Photographed in Tower Bridge Studios.
For the past 3 days I have been working as Digital Operator on Duncan Nicholls shoot for Chess London Menswear Fashion Shoot at Holborn Studios. Me and Shivvy connected our Mac’s together (as well as Dunc’s Laptop for spreadsheets), so while one of them was receiving files from the Hasselblad, the other one was processing photos into low res JPEG’s for clients to view straight after the shoot, as well as keeping track of item numbers and relating them to each shot. It was an absolutely massive shoot with over 5000 images shot so was a great challenge and put our skills to the test!
Dell Laptop, 2x Macbook Pro’s (all running SSD’s, one with dual HDD mod), Lacie Screen, fully calibrated, lots of external hard drives. PhaseOne CaptureOne Pro 6.3 running. And yes that’s me on the screen…
Shivvy’s Hasselblad / PhaseOne P25, lovely piece of kit, and so much more reliable and faster with tethered shooting than Canon / Nikon.
Models for the shoot were Julian Okines (pictured above) and Moritz Garlich from Nevs Models, both incredibly professional, hard working, friendly and well… Good looking. I don’t think either of them had a “bad angle”. I haven’t even got a good angle!!!
Shot from the makeup room overlooking Holborn Studio 2, a nice big white infinity cove. The guys at Holborn were great, and big recommendation for The Commissary, who have served the most incredible chicken sandwiches I’ve ever tasted, as well as smoked Salmon Salads, Gourmet Burgers and so on.
The guys from Chess London were one of the nicest clients I’ve met, amazing team and thoroughly good time!
The shoot was an absolutely success, incredible images shot, look forward to featuring the finished ones on the blog next time! Chess London launch is coming closer every day, and it was nice to get a sneak peak at their clothing line since I now know what I’m ordering!
Last month I assisted Ben McDade on a big shoot taking place in over 4 different locations around London in one day. It was a Converse feature on a Street Artist, Fashion Designer, Music Producer and Model for Rollacoaster Online Magazine, which by the way is absolutely incredible and available to read for FREE on their website. It was a really fun, challenging and enjoyable day working with Ben. We were traveling reasonably light, with several Profoto 7b packs and heads and a Macbook Pro for quick image transfers and backup.
Since launching the new full-screen website design and moving to iPage Web Hosting, my site has been very painfully slow… Now I have moved over to a UK based company called ZigZag Hosting, and I kid you not, wordpress back end as well as main page works extremely fast, considering the size of images that are loading!
I can’t recommend these guys enough… They migrated all 5 websites (free of charge) hosted under my domain within matter of hours, best customer service I have ever had (and I’m not just saying that).
That will be all for now, back to doing SEO!
