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The Falklands
If you’re on a social media account remotely connected to any of mine or have seen me in person at any point in the last 3 months, the news that I went to the Falklands in March would no doubt have been pretty inescable. As you can tell by my complete failure to do so, it was pretty tough not to tell literally everyone I knew about this as it was such a bizarre, amazing and frankly mind boggling experience. Seemingly not content with hearing me rant about it at any given opportunity a lot of people have been asking me what it was like, so I figured I could use a blog post to kill two birds with one stone; write a little bit about it while sharing a few of the hundreds of photos I naturally took of such a rarely visited place. So if you’re at all interested or just want to see some quite nice photos of an absolutely stunning location, keep reading.
For those not in the know; my friend Joe and I got approached by an agency at the start of the year with a proposition to take our slightly absurd country duo to the Falklands for a 40th anniversary party of Consolidated Fisheries: a fishing company based there. As we later found out they were (direct quote) ‘looking for someone crazy enough to make that journey for a show.’ Obviously that was us. We got back to them straight away saying yes, and after a couple of months of thinking we hadn’t got it, we received the big email… We were going to the Falklands!
Now like most people we had only really heard of the Falklands in connection with the conflict there in the 80’s, and I don’t think either of us fully appreciated just how far away and remote it is. It’s an 18 hour flight and is only accessible via an RAF flight from an airbase in the Cotswolds. On the way you stop to refuel at Ascension Island; another mind numbingly remote island smack bang in the middle of the Atlantic ocean about 1000 miles from the nearest significant land mass (Africa). It’s also a military base and American space program site, so unfortunately our hour long stay there had to remain completely undocumented, as photography is illegal there. However if your vibe is going to places not many people on earth have been, I’d certainly recommend it.
7 hours later and there we were, landing in the Falklands being greeted by lot of big men in military uniforms and our lovely host Sharon, who was not only responsible for making the whole thing happen but would also spend the next 6 days driving us round, providing us with everything we needed and in general just taking fantastic care of us, in keeping with the amazing Falklands hospitality we soon discovered was everywhere on the Islands. Let the adventure begin.
So what is it like there? Well as you can see, it’s beautiful. Absolutely insane landscapes, white beaches, shipwrecks and stunning wildlife are all around you as soon as you leave Stanley, which is where we were staying. Then there’s Stanley itself which is a super cute, colourful and quaint little place which is the capital city of the islands. Only about 3000 people live there, so it’s really not big and as you can imagine is pretty oozing with history, both from the war but also the preceeding 150ish years of colonial history there. It’s also windy… in fact it’s hard to convey just how windy. It’s basically as close as you can get to the Antarctic without actually being in the Antarctic, and the wind sure makes you realise that. I got specifically warned not to spend too long out in the wind, because ‘it’ll tire you out’. It did. Thankfully after about 4 hours of walking around Stanley I think I’d seen (and photographed) most of the town, and some of the highlights are pictured above and below.
And then there’s the penguins… did I mention the penguins? If I wrote a blog about the Falklands without mentioning the penguins I’d probably tick off a few of the locals somewhat, as penguins are basically the national symbol of the Falklands. It’s a wonder they’re not on the flag, and this is hardly surprising considering apparently there’s about a million of them on the islands. That’s about 283 penguins per person that lives there. Can you imagine anything better?
I didn’t manage to get too many photos of these little chillers as I went out with a wide angle lens on and didn’t want to get too close so as not to scare them, but the few I got are below. It was on the beach pictured where one of many ‘what the hell is going on and how has learning Nirvana on my mum’s old guitar when I was 14 lead me here?’ moments on the trip struck me. Needless to say, standing a couple of metres away from wild penguins on a pristine white beach 8000 miles away from home has a way of generating a certain feeling of wonder in a person.
So enough about the place, how was the whole experience? Well at risk of getting too gushing, it was incredible. Obviously we were there first and foremost to play shows, and I’d say they were among the best we’ve ever done, especially the first night. If you’re interested you can see some footage of these here. I don’t think I’m too out of line to say that things like this don’t happen too often in the Falklands, and you could really tell this by the level of energy and all out joy the crowd brought to both shows. They pretty much started dancing right out the gate, and let me tell you, people in Stanley can really dance! I’m talking ballroom dance. It was quite a bizarre moment when we started playing a slower number only to see everyone couple up and literally start waltzing around the dance floor, complete with spins and twists. It was also great to get off stage and meet the locals, all of whom were just lovely. There was a slightly hairy moment when we went to play the matinee show on Sunday afternoon only to discover that both of us had almost completely lost our voices, but even this was met with nothing but warmth from everyone in the place. One phrase that really sticks in my mind was ‘If you make any kind of noise at all we’ll count that as a success,’ and that sure is how it felt.
It also feels hard to do the trip justice without mentioning the chaps in the photos below. Up until about 3 weeks before the trip we thought we were the only band crazy enough to be making the journey, but we then discovered some guys called ‘Pat Winn and the Western Stars’ would also be playing. We also didn’t realise we’d be sharing a house with the guys, which I guess could end up being less than ideal if you didn’t get along, but thankfully from the word go that wasn’t really something we had to worry about. All absolutely lovely guys, phenomenal musicians and would you believe it, they liked a few beers just as much as us. We ended up getting on like a house on fire and having some very funny times, and it was great to get to dance to some proper country music played fantastically by great musicians. Thanks for a great trip fellas, hope you’re all well!
And that’s it! I’m sure I’ve missed out a lot. It turns out summarising 6 mindblowing days of surreal fun in a single blog post is a little trickier than I thought, but hopefully the photos can give you some idea of what the place is like. Suffice to say, we had an absolute blast. There’s not much better than travelling to exciting new places and playing music you love with great friends by night and walking around taking photos by day, so this really checked all the boxes. Huge thanks to Sharon, Trish and everyone at Consolidated Fisheries for getting us over there, singing along and looking after us so fantastically well. The same goes to all the people of Stanely we met who made us feel so welcome and had a great laugh with us. I know we said it a lot while we were there, but this really was a once in a lifetime experience for us so it really means a lot. And of course to Joe, Pat, Glen, Dave and Stu for such a blinder of a time! This wont be a trip I’ll forget any time soon!
Australian Adventures in Analogue
As some of you may know, Lauren and I went to Australia at Christmas to spend my first ever warm Christmas with the Australian fam. What you may not know though, is that I was very kindly gifted a mint condition, 37 year old analogue 35mm film camera by Lauren’s mum when we arrived. In quite a cool full circle moment, the camera was originally bought by Lauren’s dad before she was born to take pictures of her as a baby and at some point got resigned to the store room. Fast forward 37 years and it’s been given to me, who will use it almost exclusively to take photos of Lauren. As I say… full circle.
Now as a disclaimer, I have never used an analogue SLR camera. I had to look up how to load film, how to expose photos, heck even how to focus. For this reason if you’re expecting arty, well taken photos, you may be in the wrong place. This is the first two rolls of film I took with this camera and I was totally getting to grips with it while documenting the trip, so they are very much holiday snaps. However, I thought people may want to see what we got up to in all it’s grainy analogue glory, so here we go:
Now make no mistake; anyone that has ever talked to me about photos, cameras or photography will know that this is pretty much a 180 degree turnaround. In fact since getting this camera I’ve even had friends screenshot old messages from me saying that analogue cameras were obsolete, unnecessary and anything you could do with an analogue camera could be replicated with a digital one. All I can say is… I was wrong. I absolutely love how these have come out, and could not have done it on my digital.
I still don’t think I would have ever been interested if one hadn’t fallen into my lap like this (which is a really great twist of fate) and there’s still a lot of things I don’t like about this camera. My biggest gripe is that you need to bring it up to your eye to see what you’re shooting, read the light meter and focus. This takes away any opportunity to shoot from the hip, which I’d say about 70% of my photos of people are. It sounds creepy (maybe it is?) but I think portrait shots are so much better when the subject has no idea there’s being a photo taken, as they’re actually just acting how they would and there’s a lot more scope for natural, beautiful moments between friends and family to be captured. However, I’ve found with this that the second you bring a camera up to your face people start posing and doing that weird forced smile that we all seem to do whenever we know we’re having our photo taken, which I do feel takes a lot of the actual spontaneity out of the photos. Also very unsurprisingly given it’s nearly 40 years old this camera is disastrous in low light (again, where I take a lot of my photos) but I’m hoping with some different film and lens choices down the line I can slightly sort this issue out.
But these don’t detract too much from the upsides. Namely, knowing you only have 36 photos so really making each one count as opposed to taking 1000 shots a day and never doing anything with about 95% of them. Plus of course the true sense of excitement you feel when you’re waiting to get the photos back which is something I don’t think I’ve ever even come close to in the digital realm. And of course… that grain! The thing that numerous instagram filters and Lightroom presets are trying to imitate but can never really compare to is just right there on every shot.
My absolute favourite part of this whole process was learning about double exposures. I’d kind of heard of these through weird photoshop tutorials in the past but didn’t really know what they were or why I’d want to do them. However at the end of the YouTube tutorial I watched to learn how to use the camera (because obviously that’s how everyone learns how to do everything nowadays) the guy mentioned this fairly advanced technique called double exposures which, even though I didn’t even know how to take a single photo on the thing yet, I knew I’d be trying out before long. For those who don’t know, they are basically two photos in one photo. You take a shot of something, then without winding on the film take another photo and they will be kind of blended together to create what can be a really cool effect. In the one above I took a shot of a fish tank that also doubled as a window in a pub that also doubled as a Chinese takeaway (I know, bizarre) and then took a photo of Lauren to come up with this shot. There’s a few more examples in the shots below, although I think this is probably my favourite. For anyone that wants to try these, they are tricky concept because you’re exposing the film twice which means it needs half the amount of light on each photo to be correctly exposed; so maybe if you want to try it… y’know, YouTube it first.
So there you have it, my first forays into analogue. As I’ve said above, I really enjoyed taking these (and most importantly not having to edit them!) so I hope you’ve enjoyed them too. I’m planning on doing a lot more of this if the cost of the film doesn’t financially cripple me, so assuming I don’t need to sell my laptop to afford it I’ll keep posting the best of these, so keep an eye out. The future is analogue!
Jack and Lisa’s Wedding
I was on Facebook the other day (I know right?… Old) when I noticed it was the anniversary of Jack and Lisa’s wedding, meaning it was also the anniversary of my first wedding as a photographer. Aside from reminding me of a great day, this also prompted me to think “My god, it’s been a year and I haven’t really posted many pictures of that or done a blog post about it on my website or anything. How am I so bad at the internet?” So at that very moment I vowed to right this wrong and here we are a week (and a few hundred swear words directed at my computer) later with a blog about the big day.
As just mentioned, this was a big for me. I’d only done one other wedding before this (big shoutout to Jules and Caroline) and that was a ceremony only shoot at a registry office during covid, meaning due to various rules and an upcoming proper wedding day with a proper wedding photographer, the whole thing was over in about half an hour. While this was a great day and a lovely opportunity to be handed, it was quite a far cry from a full day, whole event wedding like the pros do. For Jack and Lisa’s, it was time I put on my big boy pants, face my fears and go for the big time.
I’ve known Jack since my very first day at uni; in fact he was quite literally the very first person I met on my first day there. There I was, sitting alone at a table having just arrived at the bar, silently contemplating the utter horror of trying to make friends when this blonde haired guy who looked like a James Blunt fan (and it turns out was… in a BIG way) asked if he could sit down. Fairly unbelievably, it turned out that not only was he in the room two doors down from mine in halls, we were also essentially the same course and, fairly bizarrely, our dads came from the same town. The rest, as they say, is history. However at no point during that meeting or on any of the many nights of student drunken debauchery that followed did I ever, ever see a scenario where one day I might be taking this man’s wedding photos. Nonetheless, a good 18 years later I got a call from Jack asking if I could do it and was absolutely honoured for the chance.
It was a full on day. Post ceremony taxi ride around London, followed by reception, group photos and then everyone’s favourite; the party. On top of all that, I was obviously also a guest, so as well as making sure I captured every moment and kept all batteries etc. topped up, I also had to adhere to Jack and Lisa’s ‘most important instructions’… i.e. to ‘put the camera down and have a good time.’ It was a fine tightrope to walk, but thankfully I think I managed to succeed in both jobs, and I’m really happy with how the photos came out. And I definitely had a good time!
Huge thanks to Lisa and Jack for taking a punt on an as yet untested commodity for the biggest day of their lives. It was an honour to even be invited, but it also felt pretty special to have that level of faith put in me. Big thanks also to my special assistant (who can be spotted in one of the below photos) for helping everything come together, and to the one and only Simon Smith for making day two of the wedding so unforgettable!
If you need a wedding photographer for your big day or any other big events coming up please don’t hesitate to get in touch to see if I can help.
The Best of 2022
2022 was a strange, often not very pleasant year for a number of reasons, and until I started putting the photos together for this blog I was ready to write it off and consign it to a history I didn’t want to remember. However, looking back at what I’ve done this year and particularly recognising a few pretty huge leaps I’ve made professionally has made me realise that actually, it wasn’t all that bad.
This year I’ve learned a huge amount, continually finding out ways to improve how I take and edit photos and perhaps most importantly realising I actually knew nothing about filming videos and taking big steps in both equipment and skills to remedy this.
It should also probably be mentioned that I’ve been lucky enough to go to Australia twice in one year, which I realised half way through my ‘woe is 2022’ mini-rant is probably a lot of people’s dream.
Despite both trips being pretty whirlwind affairs with not a great deal of free time, I obviously managed to find some to take a lot of photos, a number of which I’m fairly proud of. These included a whole gallery from my brother Austen’s wedding to his beautiful bride Nicole, which was definitely one of my highlight days of the whole year and an absolute joy to be a part of.
While we’re on the subject of weddings, I’d have to say this was probably my biggest breakthrough of the year. In my career up until now I’d always seen weddings as a terrifying prospect far off in my future that only ‘real’ photographers could hope to achieve, mostly because of the level of organisation involved and the pressure that you really only get one shot at the big moments.
Before this year I’d done one half hour civil ceremony wedding that was a lot simpler that the full day monoliths in my nightmares, but thankfully this was enough for my good friend Jack to take a punt on me and ask me to do his whole wedding day. Let’s just say I’m very glad he did, as at the time of writing I’ve now done 3 full weddings, each of which seemed like a monumental achievement and taught me an incredible amount about taking photos, handling pressure and what I could actually do if I had the self belief to just go for it. So big thanks Jack and Lisa!
2022 has also been a year of milestones in all other forms of media. As mentioned, I’ve taken big leaps in the world of video; filming my first corporate promo video, filming/being in 3 music videos and most importantly realising just how little I originally knew about the format and particularly what can be accomplished with a decent camera.
I also achieved a lifelong dream this year of recording and mixing a full length album, which as well as being an absolute blast has again taught me a gigantic amount about something I already thought I knew everything about. Big shout outs to Tim, Joe and Ed Ripley for making all that happen.
Last but certainly not least, I joined the wonderful Our Own Brand as a part time content creator this year. From past experience it’s pretty rare to find a company who not only value you and nurture your skills, but are also a hoot-a-minute blast to work with, so big thanks to Sarah, Rich and everyone else on the team for having me!
Here’s some particular highlights of 2022 in photos:
So in summary… I guess I was wrong, 2022 wasn’t all that bad.
And the final icing on the cake? Right at the end of the year I decided to throw all caution to the wind and hit the credit card hard with a brand new Canon EOSR6 Mark 2. This is the only time I’ve ever bought a brand new camera, much less one that is so up to date accessories for it don’t even exist yet, and I could not be more excited see how it impacts my work. Far more than having a new toy to play with, a purchase of this magnitude seems in my mind to be a real commitment to photography and to my own career, which is something I’ve never really done before and therefore is a pretty exciting thing to have done.
Happy New Year Everyone, for once I truly cannot wait to see what this one holds!
Austen and Nicole’s Wedding
‘I come from a land down under’
One benefit of having a younger brother who’s a professional photographer is that you’d hope to safely assume you’d be able to get some good wedding photos out of the deal, and possibly even save a few thousand pounds on another photographer in the process.
While Austen and I did briefly trifle with the idea of me doing all his wedding photos for him and my lovely new sister-in-law Nicole, we both decided that if I was flying half way around the world to celebrate my big bro’s big day, it’d be a little frustrating for me to have to work the whole thing and not be able to have any fun, so we decided against it.
However, I knew there’d be no way I’d be able to resist taking a few of my own, and it actually turned out Austen didn’t have a photographer there for the groom prep so it made sense for me to go down and take a few snaps of that and then take my camera to the wedding. Here’s a selection of my photos from the day. Big love to Austen and Nicole for such a beautiful day and a great trip all round!
