Last week I photographed the new 'Miss England' for The Sunday Telegraph. 'Miss Derby', Laura Coleman, was declared the winner at a ceremony in London. I took some rather frenzied photos of Laura just as she arrived back in the east midlands
and pretty much on the deadline. She certainly doesn't match the stereotype of a 'blonde bimbo beauty queen', having graduated from University at Leicester last week! Her mother was also a beauty queen in the seventies and to make it a hat-trick her grandmother was 'Miss Forces Pinup' in 1945.The runner up in Miss England was Chloe Marshall, Miss Surrey- the first plus size girl to reach the final.

Cooking up a storm-Chef Ben Ebbrell and Art Director Barry Taylor at work in the kitchen.

It's been a busy and fun week. Including photographing two of the 'Sorted' team for The Guardian. 'Sorted' is a new cookery book aimed at students, but with a video connection for the 'U-Tube generation'. I realised there was a gap in the market for something similar a few years ago when my daughter went off to University. Unlike the enterprising students who have produced 'Sorted' though, I didn't take things any further. The book is excellent-just how I had envisioned a survival manual for youngsters who are often living away from home for the first time. It breaks things up into bite sized chunks of information,(excuse the pun), and has a real sense of fun to the whole project which should appeal to students. I'm guessing quite a few parents will be buying one for their offspring before packing them off in September.



This is G-AMPY, one of a fleet of three Dakota DC3 aircraft owned by Atlantique Airlines of Coventry. I photographed passengers setting off in the vintage WWII aircraft for one of the last passenger flights it will undertake. Under new EC safety regulations the DC3 fleet would have to be fitted out with safety slides, oxygen masks and lockable cabin doors from July 15th
if they are to continue in a passenger carrying role. The cost of fitting that little lot, even if it was possible, would be prohibitive.

Here are some images I shot at The Shell Eco Marathon for The Guardian this week. Lots of tiny 'cars' resembling streamlined coffins as they made several laps of the Rockingham Circuit in an effort to extract the maximum miles per gallon. Each car has to maintain an average speed of 15 mph so the tiny engines are powered up for short bursts during each lap.
A french team won the event-with a mpg figure approaching ten thousand miles per gallon!

Mobile phones-love them or hate them. I've had them since they were the size of two housebricks back in the 1980's.
They always seem to go off just as you reach the checkout at Tesco's or when you are on the top of a ladder or something.

My latest phone is a Nokia N82. Not exactly a sleek little number, but it does most things pretty well. Including switching itself onto answerphone mode for 2 days this week, all by itself. Then leaving no record of the fact on it's not very bright screen. No missed calls messages, no record of what it had been up to and no sign that it had been up to no good.

As a result I've lost several hundred pounds worth of work this week-ouch! I could have paid for a blackberry or apple i-phone contract for one year with that. It shows how important mobiles have become-no one tried the home phone because they all had the mobile number in their contacts. So I've sent out my business cards, this time with my home number on as well.
I've also switched the voicemail answerphone well and truly off.
Mobiles-I think I hate them!

Oscar Cash, saxophonist with 'Metronomy'.

Another first for me this month. I've never photographed a band in near complete darkness before-usually they are in the spotlight!

The band was 'Metronomy' and I photographed them in Bedford for The Guardian. Unfortunately the timings were out, so I watched some backing bands while I waited. 'The Casio Kids' were first up- sad to say, but I am old enough to be their grandfather! Their performance was really good considering they were all aged 15yrs and playing their first ever gig together. Amongst the small group of onlookers were their moms and dads.

In their usual quirky way, The Guardian had decided to experiment that week and send the sports reporters out to report on arts jobs and the arts reporters out on sports assignments. So I was teamed up with an amused reporter who normally covers the Tour de France amongst other sporting greats. He was of even more advanced years than me, but had cunningly brought a friend along who was older still.

Everything was going fine until 'Metronomy' took to the stage and then the lights dimmed and I realised that my careful planning was a waste of time. So it was on with the flashgun and drop the shutter speed down to 2 seconds to get some kind of image, even at high ISO. If I'd looked on the net first, I would have realised that the band wear black T-shirts with what appears to be a white circle on the front. Turns out to be nightlights, which they occasionally turned on!

An interesting job for The Daily Express last week-as part of their 'Crusader Campaign' the newspaper sorted out the phone problems being experienced by Jacqui and Andy Meads who run the 'Safewings Bird Sanctuary'.
Being unavailable to take calls from people with sick or injured animals and birds was obviously not good news, but fortunately everything is working again now.


The owl chick is a Tawny Owl. At one point I got to hold it, which would normally be a thrill except that I was terrified of it dropping a load on me or taking my eye out Eric Hosking-style,(he was a famous wildlife photographer who lost his left eye when attacked by a Tawny Owl defending it's nest).
In a continuation of my 'Deja vu' post, I discovered that I had photographed Jacqui before-back in the 1980's when she was a
wing walker with the Barnstormers Flying Circus. She still has the black and white photograph I took of her waving from the top wing of a Tiger Moth aircraft.

I've been unable to post to my blog for a while-fortunately Stu the internet guru has taken a peek at it this afternoon
and sorted the problem out-whatever it was. Thanks Stu :-))

Very strange- I arrived at a job this week to find myself thinking "hey, I've been here before!". Well, I had-a job which I did for The Telegraph several years ago was repeated for The Guardian. It was a story about autism and here is the article which the newspaper printed..

The same thing happened when I went shopping in a famous chainstore the other day. I picked up a bag of greens and thought-"he looks familiar." Turns out to be one of my pictures of a farmer for said superstore.... here he is !

Another week of getting soaked. I'm really hoping it doesn't turn out like last year with a few weeks of sun and then rain for the rest of the time. I ended up drying off in a pub called 'The Telegraph' this week while taking photos of an equally soaked subject for 'The Guardian'.

Today I'm off on an arty job for The Guardian where the writer has mentioned "Constable skies". More like a dirty grey as I look out of the window and I'm keeping a sharp eye on the met forecast to see if things improve. It's often a problem when the writer visits a place and sees things which are simply not there on the day photos are shot. Not that I'm suggesting that they sometimes make things up of course-well not at The Guardian anyway!

The Sunday Telegraph sent me off to north London this week to photograph a used vegetable oil collector. Diesel is now averaging £1.29 a litre at the pumps in the UK so demand for vegetable oil has rocketed because the biodiesel that can be produced from it is 15p a litre cheaper with less duty payable. Thieves are even targeting the used oil from restaurants and either selling it on to biodiesel producers or producing their own. Apparently the oil has to be filtered then 'cooked' with methanol.
All I can say is that it looks a pretty messy process judging by the filthy oily van and barrels the collector arrived with.
I'm certainly not going to say I love the smell of chip fat in the morning.