Cannes 2010

No sooner am I back at work, and while still trying to settle in a new home, than it's Cannes Film Festival time again. The town of Cannes had been battered by storms the week prior to the festival, but all credit to the organisers it was up and running (with sunshine) in time for the start - albeit to a back-drop of bulldozers shoring up the beach.
It wasn't a classic year in terms of celebs appearing (Sheryl Cole as one of the main highlights? C'mon...) but it's the kind of event that you have to attend every year or risk losing your place. Every photographer is allocated a spot on the red carpet, but only those lucky enough to get a front row number actually stand where they're meant to. The rest of us end up peeping over shoulders and squeezing into gaps where we can see clearly (a few ingenious snappers even bought hugely stacked glam rock/70's disco shoes to give them a height advantage - I see a photographer's fashion trend emerging). The shot above of Naomi Campbell was taken at a point where I couldn't see clearly, and consequently includes the melee of photographers in front of me and beyond. Ironically it was my best selling image during the festival, but I guess when there's so many 'clean' shots of someone, getting something a bit different makes a change.

J-Lo and Cheryl Cole providing some much needed glamour for the festival.

Sky HD

Oh, how we suffer for our art.
I was shooting portraits and background stills today of rugby player Lewis Moody while he filmed a piece for Sky HD. The piece was to demonstrate the clarity of HD TV, by showing a Lewis tackle from an opponents point of view. Poor Lewis had to make repeated runs and tackles under a bitterly cold rain machine, wearing a variety of HD cameras filming his face and feet as he ran. (On a geek note, I noticed that Sky used a Canon SLR 7D to film a lot of the scene, so the video capability of cameras like my 5D really are up to scratch.) The heavy backlighting and rain made my job difficult, trying to focus on a fast moving Lewis through the bright mist while avoiding flare from the lights, but luckily he made enough runs for me to get what I needed.
After all the tackling, I had to get a close up portrait of Lewis' 'psyche-out' stare for Metro. The poor fella was so cold by this point that me keeping him from the warm for an extra five minutes put genuine hatred in those eyes. If it's any consolation to him, I only had a thin linen jacket on for protection, and was soaked and shivering too. As Billy Connoly said "There's no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing choices."

3,2,1 and you're back in the room.

You may or may not have noticed a quiet absence on my part recently. It's not from laziness or lack of work that I haven't posted any entries since Sep 2009, but more because I've been away on sabbatical with my family.
But I'm back now.
That's no guarantee of regular posts, but if I see/hear/do anything interesting and find 5 minutes to write about it, I will.