New pavilion at Herne Hill Velodrome

June 27, 2017 in Work, Photography

I'm lucky enough to live a short bike ride from Herne Hill Velodrome, which has been home to track cycling in south-east London for over 125 years. After falling into disrepair, an effort led by local riders through the Herne Hill Velodrome Trust secured the funding to repair the track and then to rebuild the pavilion, providing facilities for events, changing rooms, and seating for spectators.

Hopkins Architects - who designed the London Olympic velodrome - have created a beautiful curved timber building that reincorporates the Victorian columns from the original pavilion. The Trust crowd-funded a whopping £89,000 to complete the internal fit out. I took a set of photos for the Trust to document this fit-out and the pavilion and track in use on a sun-drenched Track League evening. Good work everyone...

Wahaca Brighton restaurant photography for Softroom

April 28, 2016 in Work, Photography

It was great to shoot another Wahaca restaurant, this time in Brighton. It's a fantastic space with distinct zones marked out by the structure and the interior design, and stunning murals by Mexican street artist Mazatl. There's a private dining area screened from the street by a multi-coloured chain-link Virgin Mary. The architect/interior designer is Softroom with lighting design by Kate and Sam.

Wahaca have been certified carbon neutral and given a top rating for sustainability - it's great to know that both the food and the restaurant design have minimised their impact on the planet, even while they have maximum effect on your tastebuds and retinas...

Red-roofed extension shot for Forrester Architects

April 08, 2016 in Work, Photography

A few weeks ago I shot this really interesting residential extension and refurbishment in North London for Forrester Architects. The asymmetrical timber roof is painted with a special Swedish preservative paint that gives a stunning and unusual matt red finish.

Bonhams Knightsbridge for Kate and Sam Lighting Design

March 02, 2016 in Work

I recently shot Bonhams auction house in Knightsbridge for Kate and Sam Lighting Design. One great thing about winter is that dusk shots can be done at a sociable time of day!

Harcombe Road by Forrester Architects featured on Dezeen

March 02, 2016 in Work

A really interesting extension/renovation project I shot for Forrester Architects is featured on Dezeen: http://www.dezeen.com/2016/03/01/kenny-forrester-architects-harcombe-road-house-extension-north-london/

Whaling Station images on the Guardian website

June 10, 2014 in Britain's Whale Hunters, Work

The Guardian have published an online gallery of my pictures from South Georgia. They focus on the wildlife that now inhabits the abandoned whaling stations...

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/gallery/2014/jun/10/britains-whale-hunters-in-pictures

Making ‘Britain’s Whale Hunters: The Untold Story’

June 09, 2014 in Britain's Whale Hunters, Work

‘Britain’s Whale Hunters: The Untold Story’ reveals Britain’s deep involvement in the whaling industry right up until the mid 1960s. Antarctica became the focus of whaling companies in the early 20th century, and the epicentre of operations was the British island of South Georgia. In 60 years, 1.6 million whales were killed in Antarctica, driving the biggest whales - blue and fin whales - close to extinction. Our series looks at what drove this immense whaling effort, what it was like for the British whalers who went to Antarctica, and why scientists and politicians couldn’t bring in effective regulation until it was almost too late.

We had a few big challenges in making the series, which was overseen, and shot, by the brilliant series producer Tom Beard. Two that I was most involved in were getting ourselves all the way to South Georgia to film for a month on a relatively modest budget, and tracking down all the archival film, photographs and documents that provided first-hand material for the programmes.

We couldn’t have filmed in the whaling stations on South Georgia without the permission of the government of the islands. They helped us out enormously and we were able to join an expedition team of archaeologists from Geometria who have been conducting a laser survey of all the whaling stations on the islands. The aim is to preserve a 3D digital record of the stations in their current state. There are just too many buildings, and the conditions are too harsh, for them all to be preserved as they are.

An image of Leith Harbour Whaling Station created from laser-scanning data collected by Geometria

South Georgia is one of the remotest places left on the planet. If you have the right connections, you can fly to the South Pole or the North Pole, but South Georgia has no airstrip and is 900 miles east of the Falkland Islands. You can only get there by boat, and it takes about 4 days each way. Many film crews charter a boat to take them there and then act as their base, but that was way out of our BBC4 budget.

We were helped out by the kind people at G Adventures who were running one of the first cruise journeys to South Georgia last season. They put aside a 4-berth cabin, collected us in the Falkland Islands, and we travelled to South Georgia in relative luxury. We ate excellent three-course dinners and their fantastic team would put us ashore with all our filming kit to film the amazing penguin and seal-filled beaches in the northwest of the Island.

We volunteered our ever-game presenter Adam Nicolson to give a lecture to the cruise passengers...

Our goal was to meet up with the Pharos - the South Georgia government’s vessel - which was acting as a floating base for the Geometria laser-archaeologists. We ended up loading our 30 cases of gear into the Zodiacs after dark and making a fairly thrilling transfer between the ships in Stromness Bay, which is home to Leith Harbour - the biggest whaling station in South Georgia. The crew of the Pharos hosted us magnificently - George the Chilean chef made sure we arrived home fatter than we left - and we were put ashore each morning to explore the amazing ruins of Leith Harbour.

In the end, we not only did one of the best-value filming trips to South Georgia, but probably had one of the most comfortable as well (when we weren't exploring asbestos-riddled buildings in our full-body suits and masks).

Our daily commute to Leith Harbour from the Pharos

When it came to old film and photographs of whaling and the whaling stations, we were very lucky that the period we were looking at - roughly 1910 to 1965 - coincided with the commercialisation of film and cine cameras. At first it was only the managerial class of whalers who could afford the equipment. In the 1920s, the chief figure in the British whaling industry was Harold Salvesen, who was the first whaling boss to make the trip down to South Georgia, and he carried a cine-film camera with him to record what he saw. Harold's family kindly gave us access to his films which provide an amazing record of whaling in the late 1920s and 1930s.

In the later years, the whalers themselves started to buy cameras and take photos of their work and their lives in Antarctica. Many of them generously provided us photos to use and we took them all to South Georgia with us. We could often get ourselves into the same spot the photo was taken and see what had changed (and how little hadn't) in 50 years. Some of the most remarkable are Kodachrome images by John Alexander, an electrician for Salvesen & Co, and you can see more of them on the BBC website here.

Leith Harbour in the 1950s by John Alexander - the whole whale-catcher fleet came in for maintenance over winter

Moving film was still a more expensive hobby in the 50s and 60s, but we struck gold with some colour 8mm film shot in the 1960s by Nigel Bonner, who was an inspector of the sealing industry on South Georgia in the early 1960s, and by Ian Cumming, who worked as the government dentist on the island. Both of them used their cine cameras to record family excursions and picnics amongst the penguins. But interspersed was some incredible and often grisly footage of catching and processing whales on South Georgia.

Ian Cumming's 8mm films included this unique footage of Salvesen & Co whale-catchers being scuttled off South Georgia when they decided not to continue whaling at Leith Harbour

Nigel has sadly passed away, and his wife Jenny generously allowed us to borrow his films and do a new transfer of his films to digital files. Ian Cumming is still alive and well in Scotland and was delighted that we could make use of films that he had proudly threaded through his projector and shown to people in the intervening five decades.

They're just a few of the many people who gave us a huge amount of assistance making this series. Whaling may have had an enormous impact on the whales of Antarctica, but it was never a major part of the British psyche: conducted on the other side of the world, out of sight and largely out of mind. But those who were involved in whaling - as whalers, scientists, regulators, or just observers - are all keen to remember why it happened and what it was like, even though they all now regret the eventual outcome.

'Britain's Whale Hunters' in the Telegraph

June 08, 2014 in Work, Britain's Whale Hunters

There was a great article on 'Britain's Whale Hunters' in the Saturday Telegraph by the presenter Adam Nicolson. The penguin picture and the panorama of Leith Harbour are my pictures - the panorama is from an iPhone 5!

The amazing 1950s Kodachrome image of the bone saw is by John Alexander. He was an electrician at Leith Harbour, and a keen photographer. He's still alive and full of beans. There's more of his pictures on the BBC website here.

'Britain's Whale Hunters: The Untold Story' is on BBC4 on Monday 9th and 16th June, at 9pm: www.bbc.co.uk/whalehunters