Hey chums. Its my 5 year anniversary of being a photographer today. Five years ago today, I got up, went straight to Calumet and bought my very first full-frame sensor (FX) professional camera, a Nikon D700. I had been tinkering with a D60 and a D300 a little before - both crop-sensor (DX). I bought the D700 pretty much on a crazy whim - it was crazy expensive, and I had to buy the appropriate lenses to go with it. I wasnt really calling myself a photographer at that point, but I was doing it a little to complement my graphic design, I had been tired of being forced to integrate awful, naff and wacky photographs sent to me by producers into my poster designs, so I had started doing photos myself. But that fateful day, on November 9th, I realised that I needed the photographs to be better, that the crop-frame sensors were somehow not good enough, I couldnt bear to shoot with those cameras any more. I was so furious with their shortcomings. Man, what a dick I was to those poor cameras. I think I had just gotten into the black again in my bank account and I went dizzy with power when I handed over my entire overdraft facility to the camera shop and came away with the D700 and the beautiful Nikkor f2.8 24-70mm lens. Later that day, I went and photographed Pappys. I cite this shoot as my first fully professional shoot, this is the moment I started feeling even a little bit comfortable calling myself a photographer. We shot these photos with one flash-light in Matthew Crosbys flat in Crystal Palace, primarily for their excellent Edinburgh Festival show All Business. Im genuinely am still happy with them and I they went everywhere, a few front covers of brochures, festival programmes, magazines, and they went all over iTunes with their podcast, which was really very thrilling. So. Its five years later and Ive done over 500 shoots since then, have filled 20TB of hard drives spinning with all my work, owned several more lenses, a D4 and a D800 and a whole ton of flashguns. My team at Draw HQ has grown, starting of course with my amazing sisterly assistant Julia whom many of you know as the woman with amazing upper-body strength - PERFECT for hoisting lights around. Thanks to everyone who has been nice and supportive and let me photograph them. Hope youve been enjoying the pictures. Im doing a big retrospective exhibition called This Comedian, February 19th-March 2nd, which will include lots and lots of photos and designs of all our comedy chums and shows, and hopefully it wont just be about me, but about what weve all been up to over the years in comedy, a little TRIP THROUGH TIME. Please do come, it will mean a lot to me and I really think it will be fun. xxx
Posted on: Sun, 09 Nov 2014 11:53:28 +0000