London marathon & coffee

Monday, April 26, 2010 | London wedding, Personal

Photographer friend Helen Bartlett ran London Marathon yesterday and we estimated her ETA about the 10-mile mark, at the end of Deptford High Street. I took a camera – theoretically to photograph her – but as it turned out, missing her completely in the busyness that is tens of thousands of runners. Here are a few of the day. I found out, through the wonder of Twitter and Facebook, that the person inside the bear outfit for Action Medical Research was a fellow photographer from Southampton – Lee Collier (twitter id: @LeeCPhotography). His Twitter stream showed he survived the marathon day.

These two guys are brothers, raising more than £3000 for Action for Kids.

Gentlemen runners in London Marathon

There was at least one casualty from the day.

Afterwards, I went to the nearby Gallop Cafe for some Monmouth Coffee in their art installation style eatery. One of the owners joked yesterday to customers that they used whatever they had to fit it out – “like Wombles” – but the effect is very lovely, clean and chic with items on each white table: mine had a white toy Ferrari and a David Ogilvy biography hardback. The cafe has a  miniature film booth behind a hidden door and is hosting this month’s Deptford Film Club.  The coffee was delicious – had to have a second cappuccino – the cakes looked scrummy and the bread and jam received a huge approval rating from the little girl with long eyelashes sharing a table: she demolished a plateful, leaving her mother a very tiny piece after much negotiation. Thanks to local blogger Deptford Dame for the tip-off about Gallop.

Gallop Cafe coffee

London wedding portraits

Tuesday, July 18, 2006 | Portraits

Bryony and David were married some years ago and chose to have this wedding portrait session with time and the summer sunshine on their side.  We shot their session around the OneSE8 development, where the studio is based and in an adjacent field. Bryony’s contrasting red shoes looked brilliant against the bright blue walls.
 

London wedding portraits

London wedding portraits
London wedding portraits
Next to my new home is what I can only describe as an urban field. It may well have once been a football pitch, but is now overgrown with summer grasses and weeds in a rather pleasant way. There’s a derelict building at one end, covered in colourful (in an artistic sense) graffiti.

It’s not an obvious place for a bridal shoot, but I’ve been looking at a lot of the Gucci ads recently with overblown bright skies and wanted to do something inspired by those. My friends Bryony and Dave celebrate their third wedding anniversary at the end of this month and were happy enough to come over and ‘play’ in the urban field, revisiting their wedding clothes. It just so happens that they are excellent dancers, so we used that for some of their shots in the perfect summer evening. We also used apartment buildings as backgrounds for a veil shot and the last shot of the day – Bryony’s shoes, which she’s dyed red. I just love that her toenails match! And frankly, what could be more important than a girl’s shoes?