Blog
Category: Portrait
Monaco: Mission Control
Something rather exciting is happening up in the sky at the moment. As I type, the first ever round-the-world flight of a solar-powered plane is being attempted and the current base of the mainly Swiss team of engineers working on this pioneering project is right here on the French Riviera. One might think that Monaco, with its two crowded square kilometres of land, would not be ideally suited to housing a space station, but one would be wrong. Monaco is currently home to the control centre of Solar Impulse and I recently went down to photograph the project’s Mission Control Engineer, Michael Anger.
A Date with The Hexecutioner
He is known to the public as ‘the Hexecutioner’. He has a new tattoo engraved on his small body after every win (there isn’t much space left – to date he has lost only 1 of his 27 professional fights). He keeps pet pythons, iguanas and large spiders. He wears children’s shoes. South Africa’s Hekkie Budler is the world champion minimumweight boxer. Last month, he came to Monaco to defend his titles. Sam, New York Times European Sports Writer, came down to Nice and we spent the day with Hekkie and his entourage a few days before the fight, to make a portrait of the ‘toughest small guy in the world’.
Monaco: a King among Estate Agents
Comedian Stephen Fry once quipped “Estate agents: you can’t live with them, you can’t live with them”. Let’s face it, property sellers don’t exactly have the best reputation. I was sent to Monaco, where real estate is somewhat larger than life, on an editorial assignment to photograph one of the Principality’s finest estate agents.
Baby Swap in Cannes
The difference was subtle, but baby Manon’s skin colour was definitely a shade darker than her parents’. This, combined with Manon’s slightly-too-frizzy hair, didn’t overly concern her mum, Sophie…but it did bother Sophie’s boyfriend. Eventually, his doubts over Sophie’s fidelity, and the paternity of their daughter, led to the couple’s separation and a DNA test. On the day of the result, a doctor sat Sophie down. “Well, I have some news for you. Your ex-boyfriend is indeed not your child’s father…” – shocked pause – “…and there is more. You are not her mother either”.
Insurance is Fun
Last month I headed back to England on a corporate photography commission. My client, a leading national insurance company, was re-designing its brand and wanted to put its employees at the heart of a new marketing campaign. I was chosen as photographer to take over 60 portraits of insurance personnel. The intro to the brief was simple: “we want to make the idea of insurance fun, to capture our lovely employees laughing and smiling, at their natural best”. There were certainly some amusing outtakes along the way…
Monaco Portrait of a Silver Fox
Senior figures from all over the world have business (and perhaps pleasure) reasons to visit the French Riviera, especially Monaco. One of the things I love about being an editorial photographer here is the chance to meet some of the interesting characters who come and go. A few weeks ago, I was asked to take a portrait of a businessman in a hotel room. But not just any businessman, and not just any hotel.
Training on Top of the World
In Monaco one week and St. Moritz the next… this could be a jet setter’s timetable. The ski resort town of St. Moritz in Switzerland is known as a favourite winter playground for the rich and famous; Monaco needs no explanation. However, although the subjects of this portrait assignment are well-known in their sphere, they seem to entirely lack the jet set mindset. Champion triathletes Alistair and Jonathan Brownlee are true-blue Yorkshiremen, known for a particular brand of down-to-earth Britishness and understatement.
Ovarian Cancer Portraits
Up until this year, I didn’t know that regular stomach bloating could be a sign of anything more sinister than a diet too heavy in cabbage. Ovarian cancer may be less well-known than some of the other cancers, but its survival rate of this disease draws attention. Shockingly, once diagnosed, only 40% of women survive beyond 5 years. Symptoms often pass unnoticed, being as ordinary as feeling full quickly or bloating.
I met the head of marketing of Ovarian Cancer Action at the London ceremony where I won Professional Photographer magazine’s Press Photographer of the Year award, and she was now recruiting a photographer to breathe new life into the charity’s image. It was a privilege to be able to help raise attention to this cause.
Freedivers
France, is considered by many (especially the French) to be the home of freediving. If silver screen fame of ‘Le Grand Bleu’ [Luc Besson’s ‘The Big Blue’, the most successful French film of the 1980s] is not enough to convince you, then a healthy crop of French freediving champions and the fact that France hosted the first ever freediving world team championships just might.
Last September, the team championship event was back in the South of France, and I went along to meet today’s top international freedivers.
Corsetmaker in Paris
François Tamarin is a one-off. A corsetier (corsetmaker), he has a boutique in Paris, where he designs and tailor-makes corsets. Customers come from far and wide to be squeezed into his creations. Indeed he is not just any old corsetmaker. François has just been awarded one of France’s greatest honours, and I’d been commissioned to take his portrait. The New York Times had sent me to Paris to photograph a series of artisans who had just been named Meilleur Ouvrier de France [Best Craftsmen of France].