As you can see, this is not exactly what happened. and in case you were wondering – no photoshop was hurt in the making of these images.

I met him in Heathrow airport a while ago and have stayed in touch ever since. He’s a friendly, smiley individual who would describe himself as ‘knowing a little bit more than just something about most things’.

Whenever we talk, I like to think of him as having an inner battle between polite restraint and overflowing enthusiasm. He doesn’t want to come across as a know-it-all, while at the same time he’s so excited about the subject matter (this can be almost any subject matter) he wants to share information to enrich the conversation. It’s always a very rewarding process.

I love a good fact, and I like it when people accuse me of remembering unusual ones about equally unusual subjects. However, compared to Quentin I am a slovenly mud-forager from the dark ages.

If you google ‘Quentin Cooper’ you get a whole bunch of images showing an approachable, geeky, cheerful chap. This is mainly because Quentin is a chap of geeky cheer whom you could always approach. However I wanted to shoot the ‘inner him’ or more accurately what I SEE as the ‘inner him’, I find the expanse of his knowledge simply intimidating so I wanted him to ditch the friendly exterior and get his ‘Breaking Bad’ on. Being a cheerful chap he naturally obliged.

So this isn’t really an accurate portrait of Q, insomuch as it doesn’t represent the person you’d meet if you were ever fortunate to cross paths, but it’s a portait of his brain had it found itself inside a less congenial host.

Here are a couple of more accurate portraits to redress the balance.

Quentin in his office being more like his normal self

This is what Quentin is normally like.

This is another shot we did on that day – I call it my ‘Sunday Times Magazine’ portrait.

*albeit in my proportionally limited experience

Laura Whitmore strode into the Beaufort bar in the Savoy hotel, resplendent in her Aqua-marine Halston Heritage dress and Jimmy Choo’s and immediately gave me shit about saying she looked ‘rad’. Apparently the 80′s want their vocabulary back.

I was shooting Laura for a press-release by M&C Saatchi for Everything Everywhere. Announcing her appointment to grill the A-list celebrities on the red carpet at the EE BAFTA’s.

The whole red carpet event was filmed and broadcast live online by EE using 360 degree cameras. Allowing the viewers to choose one of four cameras with which to pan around and get an amazing look at what was going on. The four ‘google-street-view-like’ cameras where linked up to a central processing station, which transmitted the feed via a microwave transmitter to the roof of the Royal Opera House in London (where the EE BAFTA’s were taking place) it was then distributed to various servers and servered to the world via Facebook and a downloadable App on the iPhone and iPad.

I was REALLY looking forward to it from a geeks perspective (I’m not much one for gawping at celebrities, but the idea of being able to browse a space in real-time is a very interesting one if you think about the possible applications). Unfortunately I think I was let down by my internet connection at home – that or the high demand for the feed was curtailing it somewhat because I only got a partial view from one of the cameras for a brief period of time. Gutted.

Still, it was always going to be a big ask and hats-off to whoever decided to move away from the norm and try pushing things a bit.

Dr.Fox does a great job in explaining how we view white as a pure and peaceful colour in today’s society, whereas in fact it has a history and intonation of the darkest of aspects of human nature.
The high contrast I’ve used in this image is intended to display that relationship. One on hand you have a clean, sharp building with crisp and defined shadows, on the other hand you have an foreboding structure surrounded by and imprisoning darkness.

…or something.

Note:

You might be wondering what on earth is going on here. Well I resolved to myself that I was going to do at least one project a month of my own making. They will most likely be a mixed bag of things which catch my attention. Self-indulgent perhaps, but why not?

Jameson commisioned David Smith to design a limited edition bottle for them, they then asked me to go and shoot him for the press release.

Unless you are the sort of person who is in the habit of knowing about traditional ornamental glass art (or are a big fan of Jon Mayer*) you probably don’t know who David Smith is.

He’s amazing!

It’s not often you get to meet a master craftsman, someone who is at the top of their game (not to mention everyone elses) in a proper hands-on, grind-stone-based, hours-into-the-smallest-detail, surely-thats-done-by-a-machine-or-robot industry.

David is an expert in glass decoration, which means painstakingly grinding those small leaf-like shapes into massive fragile panes, intricately painting and foiling mirrors, signs and windows. You will have seen the sort of work in ‘ye olde shoppe’ fronts, and while it’s probably not a dying art, it’s not as fighting-fit as it once was.

People come from all over the world to be taught by David, and I can see why. As well as being the god of glass, he’s also a very down-to-earth and friendly individual, modest and unassuming -pretty much the opposite of me! :)

I’m pleased to say that we got on well, and although I don’t drink, I’ll probably buy his bottle for posterity.

*David designed Jon Mayers latest album

I shoot this panel every year (or at least I have for the last 4) and it’s always a lovely casual affair with friendly people. Benedict is known as being a nice chap so I was looking forward to it.

The whole thing went swimmingly aside from, when I was shooting the group shot, I’d forgotten what Oscar and BAFTA award-winning director, Kevin Macdonald looked like (even though I know his less-famous-but-incredibly-clever-brother, Will – and they look fairly similar!).

Oh well – I think I got away with it :)

He’s a proud scouser (a truism perhaps) with an interesting chat and a love of the Beatles.

We got on well on set and stayed in touch. I asked him if he’d help out with a personal project I had brewing and he kindly accepted. Unfortunately paying-bloody-work got in the way and the personal project (it was one of my more ambitious ones) got put on the back-burners with things like the ‘Underwater Monkeys’, ‘Skydiving Monkeys’  and ‘Monkeys Revenge’ projects.

Anyway, Scot had grown a beard (it wasn’t just something he was proud of, I’d asked him to for the project) and was about to have to shave it off for a film he was about to start shooting in Lithuania.

So he asked if I could shoot some stills of him before he did. ‘Character stills’ we could call them.

So I set myself a challenge, plain backgrounds only. Different processing styles, wardrobe and hairstyles allowed, but apart from that it’s just in the body language.

Here are some of the results.

Steve Caballero

Founded in 1966 by Steven Van Doren’s (the jocund and friendly chap at the top of the page) father in California. They quickly became the shoe of choice for the young sport of skateboarding. Now-legends Stacy Peralta and Tony Alva designed  a model of shoe in the 70′s which is still popular today (The ‘Era’) – it’s the ‘little black dress’ of skate footwear.

Today they make BMX specific shoes, snowboard boots, clothing, bags even an iPhone case (featuring their famous ‘Waffle Sole’). They have shops all over the world and hold large sporting events for skating, snowboarding and BMXing.

In the interim the company has been sold several times and is currently owned by VF Company who bought it for just under $400 million. Still involved though is Mr Van Doren, and it really makes a difference.

Steven Van Doren is friendly chap with an astounding memory (he remembered me from over a year before and I’m not a memorable person, I even forget myself sometimes!) together with his daughter, Kristy they head up the events and marketing side of things (I think), and because of this everything in those most hectic of enviroments seems like a family affair and much more friendly because of it.

I shot these pictures in Amsterdam, during a skateboard contest called The Vans Downtown Showdown, an annual competition where various skate teams from around the world design strange skate obstacles which are made into reality by IOU ramps and competed on over a three day period.

Vans Downtown Showdown 2012

Twas epic.

For anyone reading this who knows their skating, this last picture’s for you!

Right, moving on, this is a shoot I did for Red Bull a while back. Shanaze’s signing was still as secret up until the World Championships (Shanaze came second), and then the Olympics showed up (she came 6th) and a thing called ‘Rule 40′ (pdf if you’re interested) meant the images couldn’t be distributed during games time.

Both of these are over though, and so here they are!

Having shot Shanaze before for Cadbury’s it was nice to see her again and made the shoot go off without a hitch. We shot up at a cool little track in Manchester. The BBC did an extended interview with her and that was it, job done.

What no one knew on the shoot was that while the BBC were filming (and I couldn’t shoot) I borrowed a bike from the track and had a whizz about, not on the track – just in the flat bike park next to it. Having used to ride BMX quite a bit a few years ago I felt quite at home aside from the brogue shoes I was wearing. So it came as a surprise when I slipped of the pedal with one foot and they span around slamming me surgically in the shin.

I stifled a yelp and pretended nothing had happened, but during the good-byes, hugs and handshakes my right shin was throbbing so bad I could have cried.

Wikipedia tells me his career started in rap battling with his friends.

For those who don’t know what a rap battle is, think of poetry in it’s rawest and most agressive form, one-on-one, improvised in front of a baying crowd with no hesitations allowed. The aim being to simply out speak your opponent.

Each rapper takes their turn, no subject seems off-limits, in fact repetition or preparation of material is frowned on more than almost anything else.

It’s fascinating to watch, although well-worded attacks are cheered by the crowd (the reaction of whom is the only real indicator of success) what really wins the day is humour, in a deprecating manner of course.

Why am I going on about this? Especially when the image was for a Network Rail safety message (see accompanying video – not by me).

Well the answer is, I’m at home with a broken ankle (thanks to a White Van Myosis) so have decided to update my site a little and whereas I usually am rushing to do something else, today I have this or Cash In The Attic to entertain me.

And its National Poetry Day

I think rap-battle is an art form so pure (there often isn’t even a backing track) and timeless (it’s easy to imagine a Shakespearian rap-battle!) that it’s only a matter of time until it becomes way more mainstream.

I’ve stemmed away from Professor Green somewhat here. Not to worry, the chance of him (or indeed any more than 3 people) reading this is very slim.

Interesting fact about this photo though. We arrived at the beginning of the day, before filming started (we were slotting the photo-session into the filming session, but quite where wasn’t decided) waited all day as they filmed (shot the ‘at-mic’ shot during filming) then took about 29 seconds to get the shot.

That’s the way it goes sometimes. Nice bloke though.