It’s been 7 months since I moved to Shanghai – and I’ve only just made it to the top of the world’s (current) highest observation deck, The Shanghai World Financial Center/SWFC (or as it’s locally known, “The Bottle Opener”) to see the skyline from above. A few miles from Shanghai Pudong International Airport, I really have no excuse, but now I’ve been up there – wow, what a view 🙂 “View From The Top” – […]
Within a week of landing in Shanghai, I’d already heard from two people about “The Restaurant”. Owned by acclaimed French chef Paul Pairet and as a sister property to Mr & Mrs Bund, his latest project is known as “Ultraviolet“. The killer? It hosts 10 guests, on 1 table, for only 1 sitting each night. With as much technology involved as kitchen mastery, in an unknown location, and a nightmare wait-list for a fixed tasting menu which […]
The above picture is of my hotel “room” from last week in Koh Samui at the “W Retreat” in Mae Nam. What’s a hotel room doing on Paul’s blog? I hear you ask – Well, there’s a bit of a back-story to this one and the place is stunning enough to warrant me actually putting fingers to keys and writing about it (yes, it’s that good). And for once, I’m posting an entire page of images […]
“The Racetrack” – Print available to buy now In 2011, I managed to capture another shot of Devil’s Golf Course in Death Valley. Having visited many times before, each time being stunned by the scenery this National Park has to offer (along with the 120 degree heat some days!), it dawned on me that there was one area that I’d never quite managed to reach : The Racetrack Playa. The place still remains as mysterious […]
“The Greatest Wall” – Print available to buy now Since moving to China, I’d looked at the best time to go and photograph the Great Wall (or the sections near Beijing, anyway) – and no time seemed perfect. Winter is VERY cold up there, summer is too hot (and covered with people sleeping on the wall) and while autumn is a great time for colour, the early sunrise along with massive crowds makes it difficult […]
That’s right – I’ve decided to provide a watermark free copy of my Horseshoe Bend sunset image for use as a desktop wallpaper*. The image was taken in July this year, just as the sun hit the tip of the desert horizon in Page, Arizona. From this amazing vantage point, you can see the Colorado River snake its way around the huge rock formation as it makes its way to the Grand Canyon National Park. […]
This is Danny Denkmayer – one of the final four in Channel 4 and E4’s hit TV show “Playing It Straight“. The 2012 Series 2 contestant spent the series at Hacienda de los Hombres in Spain before being eliminated in the final episode. So – why was he in the studio? Simple : we were shooting for another set of adverts for Attitude, and the boys at Lick had drafted him in 🙂 He does however, […]
Well that was a surprise! For those of you who don’t know already, I’ve moved to Shanghai for a while – which presents me with some amazing (and very different!) opportunities to shoot some new landscapes and street scenes that you just can’t get in the West. Sadly, it’s also meant that I’ve been so busy with the move and setting up home here, updating my website has kind of slipped… 🙁 So it was […]
A couple of months ago, we were in San Diego watching the solar eclipse by accident and I started seeing images of a massive rock formation crop up across the Internet as photographers had flocked to “Horseshoe Bend” in Arizona to capture it as it happened. Sadly, clouds obscured a lot of the images they posted, but it did make me want to go there to shoot (after all, it faces almost due west, perfect […]
The Only Way Is Essex’s Dino and Georgio Geogiades headed down to Meadows Farm along with a few of the other “Lick guys” to shoot for the new “fit as” Lick Underwear campaign last month – and what a great laugh the guys were 🙂 Shooting the day after your birthday is probably not the best of ideas – a bad head is extremely likely. Luckily, having spent the night before in Birmingham (which has […]
Last October, during a visit to LA, a friend and I tried getting that ever sought-after “unique view” of the Hollywood sign. Despite signs threatening death to all tourists (I imagine it could be quite frustrating there!) the backroads surrounding the overlooks didn’t provide much in the way of an inspirational view and while we saw some fantastic houses, I left with nothing special in terms of photographs of the sign. This trip, I decided […]
Wow, it’s been a looooooong time since I wrote on here – and for that, I can only apologise. Those following me on facebook and twitter will know that it’s been a crazy busy few months, but I know that’s no excuse for not checking in on here every now and then. So tonight, I was planning to grab a few pictures of the 99% full moon – but instead the somewhat permanent feature of rain […]
Cool – I won “bronze” in Fashion, Hair & Beauty at the 2012 Professional Photography Awards – held at BFI Southbank in London last night 🙂 Last year’s awards were held at Blenheim Palace, in Oxford, and while it was a fantastic location – I have to admit I’m not really the formal dinner suit type… So it was with an element of surprise, as well as relief, when I found out that not only […]
Quick question: What do the following images have in common? The simple answer? They’d be impossible shots to take without some form of filter – and in this particular case, a filter which many people misunderstand or simply don’t think they need. That is, until they understand the power that it can have when shooting landscapes. It’s also one of the most frequently asked questions of land/seascape photographers – “how did you manage to do […]
This is a photograph I never thought I’d get – not only because I hadn’t planned a trip to Norway (the Northern Lights / Aurora Borealis had never been something I thought I would see for myself) – but also on the first dark Friday night there, having spent 4 hours freezing by the side of a lake, they showed absolutely no sign of appearing! That’s right – less than 30 minutes after getting to Tromsø, […]
It’s been a long-running debate: “How much photoshop is too much photoshop?”. In the same way that the word “text” didn’t used to be a verb, the word “Photoshop” (obviously copyright Adobe) has become synonymous with retouching or “airbrushing” worldwide. As a digital photographer, it’s one of the key tools I use every day, and provides me with a truly “digital darkroom” when it comes to fixing those small imperfections that often appear when you […]
It’s funny – as photographers, we always tend to rule out “miserable days”. The sky is dull and grey, no warmth to the light and not even any direct sunlight to cast an interesting shadow. So, having pre-booked tickets to go and visit “Sculpture By The Lakes” – an exhibition at Pallington Lakes by artist Simon Gudgeon – it was with a slightly heavy heart that we set off into the depths of the Dorset […]
With a backdrop of established businesses – La Senza, Peacocks, Comet, etc heading for (or indeed buried in) administration, I guess it was only a matter of time before one of the “big studios” would go to the wall. It seems first up is Doubletake Studios… For clarity, I am nothing to do with Double-Take studios, and never have been! (Some people seem to have confused themselves by not reading the content of my post […]
After a gruelling CES in Las Vegas, a free day in San Francisco was just what I needed, and the prospect of spending the day shooting with a great photographer friend of mine – Scott Marrs – was not to be missed 🙂 With my new Canon 16-35mm f/2.8 L II in my bag, it was time to get the tripod and ND filters out to go grab some images. We actually spent the day […]
CES – or the “Consumer Electronics Show” in Las Vegas this year was a must-see for me. While there to look at everything, and learn about emerging technologies in the conference, I couldn’t help but keep my “photographer hat” on and hunt out some little gems during the 4 days I was in town. So, the obvious big-ticket crowd pleasers: Nikon and Canon had their new flagship products at the show for a hands-on look […]
It’s been a strange few weeks really – following Christmas. First off, I’ve finally got my hands on my Canon PowerShot S100 – the replacement to the S95 with which I shot my Thailand images. Amazon UK really let me down on that one, but luckily their counterparts in the US managed to get one in time for me to do some playing around to see what it can do 🙂 Next up, I’ve not had […]
Ashamed as I am to say it, given the amount of time I spend in and around Dorset, I’ve never once photographed Corfe Castle. It’s just down the road, and hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of photographers have captured it already, but for some reason, I’ve just never gone. So, with the sunrise now starting at a reasonable hour in the middle of winter, I decided to give it a try. The only problem […]
I must have been promising to upload more pictures from our trip to Thailand for about 5 months now – well, I finally got around to it! Since the first post I made about Maya Bay (on Koh Phi Phi Leh), I’ve been meaning to sort through the hundreds of images we took over the two weeks out there and it’s embarrassing to say that I have just managed to do that. That said, I […]
Shooting a couple in a way that looks genuinely intimate can sometimes be a challenge. Those in a relationship can, at times, get “giggly” during the photo shoot and two models who are effectively strangers can be a little hit-and-miss, depending on their acting abilities. That said, it does present an opportunity to deliver photographs with a lot more story and emotion than solo shots often can and every now and then I get a […]
