Chicago. “The Windy City” – home to some of the finest architecture, food and (now!) baseball teams in the USA. Stood on the rooftop of the Carbide and Carbon Building, now the home of Chicago’s Hard Rock Hotel, it’s easy to see why people are so fascinated with this city – looking out across the skyscrapers, neighbourhoods and river as it weaves its way through the juxtaposition of historic stone buildings and sleek modern towers. And what […]
(Don’t) Look down! At around 1,000ft above the ground, Menara Kuala Lumpur (or the “KL Tower” as it’s also known) isn’t a record-breaker by any means, but hey – it’s still the highest place you can get to across the city. My usual plan when shooting nightscapes tends to specifically exclude photography from the iconic towers for one simple reason : that icon can’t be in the shot if you’re stood on it to take the photo! This […]
The sudden realisation that you’ve been back in the UK for over 6 months now, and are yet to capture any shots of London hit me a few weeks ago. An easy fix, for sure, but it also dawned on me that I was missing some standard “stock shots” of the city at night. It was time to put that right… London, to me, will always have with it a certain air of excitement. As a […]
Have you ever seen a still photograph of a cityscape move? Here’s your opportunity! Together with the guys at ToInspire, we’re pulling together each of my collections into a promo-reel, starting with cityscapes, “out of this | world”. Creating moving images from still shots isn’t the easiest thing in the world, and a lot of painstaking pixel-level work goes in to every single photograph to get the effect just right while still keeping as much of the […]
Iceland – a country of stunning beauty, dramatic views and amazing natural resources. In some ways, photographs of the huge vistas that presented themselves before us can never really show the true nature of the vast spaces and rugged landscape – but in others, they also capture a stillness that is easy to miss when you’re stood in huge, freezing, gusts of arctic wind… With glaciers all around, the sheer scale is something that must […]
Some call it a “Black Friday Sale”; Others call it a moment of madness; I call it “giving something back” (as you’ll read more about below). However, regardless of the reason, you’re not reading the title wrong – You can download, for free, one of my latest digital images for personal use. 😉 Proudly presenting… “Curtain Call”: Clicking the image above, or clicking here, will download the lower-resolution version (suitable for desktop backgrounds, 3,000 x 2,000 px). Clicking on this […]
Well, that’s it! After 3 long years being based in Shanghai, this is one of the last images I captured of this amazing skyline. In the illuminated cityscapes I’ve now shot so many times, it’s easy to forget about all the problems, issues, health effects and frustrations that come as a downside to living in such a rapidly expanding metropolis – at least the view’s amazing! But stood on top of yet another amazing rooftop location, I […]
“Malaysia, truly Asia” – The jingle on the TV ad, plane intro’s and travel programmes that I’ve been hearing for years and years really did come true last week – and not only for all the good reasons they intended… I’m sat writing this blog beneath bright blue skies and a fresh breeze in Bali – and with all of that above me, it’s too easy to forget the horrendous conditions I left behind in Kuala Lumpur last […]
Of course, witnessing that sunset was a special moment in itself – but being up here on the rooftop of the Jin Mao Tower, the home of the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Shanghai, was especially significant for me. Soon, I would be leaving Shanghai – a place I’ve called home for 3 years now – and this was a return to the very first building I’d ever visited in Asia. Stood up on the roof with my […]
Tokyo – what a truly amazing place. Full of modern innovation, side by side with centuries of culture and history. It’s one of my favourite cities in the world, and despite visiting a few times (I’ve climbed Mount Fuji twice now!) – it was another tick off the list to head back there and capture an iconic image of the skyline before I leave Asia for a while. The standard stereotypes can actually be pretty accurate […]
At the time of writing, this is literally the highest platform that a Phase One system has ever been in the world – pretty cool! Being able to capture the view below in 80 megapixels of definition is amazing, and the level of detail I managed to record (despite the circumstances you’ll soon read about below!) still surprises me. This might even become my new desktop background for little while 😉 Looking down on two of the world’s tallest […]
Night/Astro/Star/Star-trail Photography – whatever you want to call it, this is a genre which has become increasingly popular over the past couple of years (partly connected with the increase in sensitivity of reasonably-priced camera sensors over the same period). The irony being, it’s also one of the easiest forms of photography that yields some of the most impressive results if you get it right. Given the chance for some downtime while travelling around the New […]
It’s vacation season! (Well, “holiday” season when you grew up in my part of the world, but let’s not split hairs… 😉 ) And it seems my “Top 10 tips” have made it into a few publications, including today’s update on ShutterBug. With that in mind, I figured it would probably be a good idea to put a copy of them up on my own site too, so – here goes…! 😉 1. Don’t Let the Camera […]
My first visit to Beijing was a bit of a mixed bag – on the one hand, it would have been “rude not to” visit the capital city, given I’ve been living so close in Shanghai. On the other, it didn’t really impress me as much as I’d expected. Given the effort it took in order to get there, I also wasn’t keen to repeat the visit. However, a random “empty weekend” and a chat […]
It’s every photographer’s nightmare: “That email” from somebody telling you they’ve seen your work published in a place you didn’t know about. Usually this results in a sunken heart, some stern letters and frustration that yet another person has taken your work without permission. So, when I clicked the message from Joey yesterday, it was not only a huge relief – but also a pleasant surprise. It seems an agency I’ve been working with has […]
It doesn’t matter how many rooftops I’ve photographed from, whenever I’m in a new city I always get that “wow” moment when I look across the skyline for the first time – and this was no exception. From the top of a building (which was, in fairness, extremely tall in its own right!), I set up on the ledge and started clicking. Sadly, jpeg compression doesn’t do this image enough justice on-screen, but the tones of the sky and detail in […]
“Venezia” – print available to buy now What an awesome sight – being up before dawn on one of the first vaporetto (water bus) services across to Piazza San Marco (or “St. Mark’s Square” as we know it in English) and capturing San Giorgio in the distance as the gondolas moved gracefully in the tide, lapping the side of the lagoon. But Venice had a little surprise up its sleeve for me – just waiting […]
I’m rapidly becoming a huge fan of Sydney. This was the first place I ever visited in Australia, and while there are obviously many more beautiful places across the country to see, Sydney will always be the place that impressed me first. My visit earlier in 2014 gave me the chance to shoot some unique (lucky!) images of the Opera House at sunrise as well as overnight during Chinese New Year – but this time, my trip […]
You may not be aware, but 2015 is the International Year of Light (or “IYL 2015”) – a global initiative adopted by the United Nations and UNESCO to raise awareness of how light and optical technologies can promote sustainable development and provide solutions to worldwide challenges in energy, education, agriculture, communications and health. Along with over 100 scientific bodies spanning countries all around the world, SPIE organised a photo contest some time ago, and to my […]
What an amazing view – and what a privilege to be able to photograph it during a one-off event at such a special hotel location. I’ve always been a fan of the Shangri-La in Sydney, the views from the Horizon Club floor and Altitude/Blu Bar at the top of the hotel are simply the best panoramas you can get of the harbour. But this was an unexpected (and very gratefully received) honour to be allowed up onto the […]
“The City that Never Sleeps”, “Gotham City”, “The Big Apple”, “Empire City”, “The City of Dreams”, “New Amsterdam”, “The Melting Pot” – to everyone that visits or lives in this incredible city, the place leaves a lasting memory that means something different. One thing that is common to all who visit or wake up in this amazing place is the sheer sense of wonder as you look out over the skyline – and that’s what […]
It’s the one thing I promised myself I would never do after I upgraded my equipment from my Canon gear to a Phase One Medium Format system : re-shooting a cityscape I had already captured. But the lure of Shanghai’s rooftops on a clear night was just too strong, and here I found myself shooting “Shanghai Calling 2” with my 645DF+ and iQ280 digital back. Now, before I go any further, let my just clarify […]
This is Auckland, but not as we know it 🙂 This is the “Tiny Planet” version of my cityscape from New Zealand in June this year – and while only a bit of fun, I think it looks rather cool! Spending a week or so resting at Huvafen Fushi, I finally had time to start playing with some Apps I downloaded a long while ago. While there are much better (and higher resolution) ways of […]
Shanghai really is a city that needs to be seen from above to be appreciated. The problem is that getting up there in the more traditional way (in a helicopter) simply isn’t possible – so there is a growing movement of photographers who (ahem) “access” rooftops with key vantage points across the city. It’s not a risk-free process by any means, but when you get up there and can look down at the pace of things […]