Forgive the indulgence but hopefully this goes some way to explain why I’ve failed to post anything up here for months!

I’m now a proud father twice over. Finn Oisin Eric Kilcullen pictured here meeting big bro for the first time.

Merry Christmas all.

Those of you of a certain age will probably remember the 80s’ KitKat commercial with a frustrated photographer waiting in vain to photograph pandas at the zoo:

KitKat Ad

Last week at the National SEA LIFE Centre in Birmingham,  an editorial portrait shoot with a difference saw me become a modern-day version of that advert. Crouched, shutter finger at the ready, I waited over three hours for Howard the hairy hermit crab to literally come out of his shell.

Howard has become the first crab in Britain to live in a glass shell and my job was to shoot him inside his new see-through home.

However, after taking umbrage at being moved into a more photo friendly tank, he did what hermit crabs do best and hid, but eventually everything comes to he who waits (and he who bribes with fresh mussels).

See more of the pictures in the Daily Mail article.

This commission by National Grid for their Gridline magazine took me to the Marshwood Vale in deepest Dorset to the award-winning Denhay Farm, following fresh in the footsteps of super chef Heston Blumenthal who had recently spent two days at Denhay, filming a new Duchy Originals advert for Waitrose.

Stressed enough (and slightly envious) about the news that the production crew turned up with a cast of thousands and an articulated lorry full of lighting gear to achieve the beautiful olde worlde feel of the advert, my nerves were not calmed any when asked how much liability insurance I had as the last stills photographer allowed on the production line managed to blowup a glass flash tube resulting in a whole day’s production being binned, whoops.

Unsurprisingly I shot all the production pictures with one camera, one lens and no flash…

I was a bit braver for the cover shot in the cold-store, all be it with a cast of one and a small family saloon car full of lighting gear.

Photo shoot, of course!

I often read in photography books and magazines that the secret of success is to shoot the things you are most passionate about, so when I received a call from Hobsons Brewery how could I refuse.

The Brewery, in the market town of Cleobury Mortimer on the Shropshire/Worcestershire border, commissioned me to shoot a series of editorial portraits of staff and suppliers plus product shots for advertising. A good bunch of people in a nice part of the world, and they gave me a generous sample of their wares to take home. Happy days.

One of the things I love about my job is the opportunity to get access to the places people aren’t usual allowed. This particular job commissioned for the Co-Operative Financial Services magazine ‘the know’ definitely falls into that category.

The brief was to shoot an editorial portrait of Talha Khan who won a secondment to work as Executive Assistant to the CEO. The location was the roof of the Co-operative Insurance Tower a 25-storey landmark in the centre of Manchester. One of city’s tallest building and clad in over 7,000 solar panels, the perfect place to shoot a high flyer!

Apologies for not updating this sooner but I’ve been pretty manic of late, not least planning and shooting an 11 day commission photographing 2012 Olympic hopefuls at the ISSF Rifle & Pistol World Cup in Fort Benning, Georgia.

I’ll post some behind the scenes pictures soon but in the meantime I’ll try and catch up on some shoots from the last few weeks.

Thanks for all the emails so far it’s good to know someone’s reading this, (hi mom), please feel free to use the comments section for any questions.

A varied and busy week culminated in a call from the Sunday Express picture desk. The job was to shoot portraits of former pilot Captain John Hoyte for a feature on contaminated cabin air in aircraft.

Captain Hoyte, stopped flying in 2005 because he was so badly affected by fumes.

He was suffering exposure to a dangerous organophosphate called TCP as well as brain cell death and memory problems. Read the paper’s story here:

SHOCKING TOLL OF POISONED AIR CREW

After meeting at his Warwickshire home we travelled to the nearby Burton Dassett Hills Country Park, as I wanted the picture to have an expanse of sky behind Captain Hoyte and knew that the setting sun would make an excellent backdrop.

I lit the shot with a studio head and large softbox camera right as a key light and another head fitted with a 60° reflector and grid camera left to act as fill.

Litebook, the worldwide creative lighting magazine produced by Bowens has featured a recent conceptual portrait shoot I produced for my editorial portfolio.

See the cover and behind the scenes feature here.