CHARLIE PINDER

Today really was the first day of spring. After what can only be described as one of the dreariest weeks the UK has ever seen, the coldest February since records began and the wettest and snowiest month for 30 years it was simply heaven to wake up to crystal blue skies, a hike in temperatures and an altogether perfect first day of March. Even more so as I was off to Hyde Park, or more so Kensington Gardens, to shoot the Serpentine Gallery for a magazine. This time last week i was shooting another piece of architecture and as i arrived at my destination it started to snow. Today however as i arrived at my destination it was so warm that i had to take my coat off and i wished i had a pair of sunglasses on! Sadly the front lawn where the summer pavilion usually sits was a quagmire of mud from all the recent rain. They have been waiting for better weather to turf over it so from my perspective of photographing it i had to be very careful not to feature it in the shots. Not altogether too difficult as the least interesting of the shots would be face on, so i was pretty happy when i got home to have the following images in my collection. I hope you like them too because quite honestly – monday morning in Kensington Gardens was a literally a breath of fresh air…

Yes. I know. It’s been over a week since i blogged. Still not into the rhythm you might say> More that i’ve been flat out and not had the slightest chance to think about it. I have a few blog posts that i have started and will get finished and posted over the coming week (hopefully) but for now i just wanted to share some images from a portrait shoot i did today. For one of my clients I had to photograph Guy Hipwell’s portrait. Guy is the MD of Liberty & Co online division and so i had free reign to shoot inside the amazing store in the centre of London. Guy told me that Liberty & Co was actually built using the old timbers from two old Merchant Navy Ships. An absolutely gorgeous store with wonderful architecture and a plethora of objects to shoot him with…

Technically speaking i used an off camera flash and remote which enabled far better shots without having to lug a load of lighting gear around. And i hope that you agree that the shots have come out rather well…..!

Had to get some mannequin’s involved!

Controversial? Where it seems that the iphone sparked a whole new wave of street photography by people using the camera facility on their iphone, coupled with all kinds of apps to improve the image by all sorts of means, it would seem that the phenomenon (i like that word) that is called “iphoneography” has kind of forgotten that almost every other mobile phone/portable/cell out there has a camera too.

The difference is that early on someone out there coined the phrase “iphoneography” and it stuck. SO much so that there are all sorts of people out there worldwide blogging daily with new images taken on their phones. Just check out these people on Twitter to see what i mean: justwhatisee, falleri & Island_dreamer.

But what about the other mobile phones. They have cameras. Why didn’t anyone come up with a name for it so that it is all encompassing as opposed to just for iphone’s?

How about mobilography? Hmm. Nokiography? Sonyography?

Well irrelevant of whether they work or not I’ve coined Blackberrography because that is the phone that i have right now and that is what the photos in my new online gallery were taken on. It might not have quite the same ring to it as the “iphoneography” but until i get one of the iphone’s then it will have to do.

Make of it what you will, but go and have a look at the gallery and leave a comment. They’d be good to hear.

http://www.charliepinder.co.uk/gallery.php?id=phone%201

And for now here’s one of those images:

Skating on soup?

The first day of February this year brought with it the annual Social Enterprise Conference which was being held in Cardiff’s International Arena – you could be forgiven for thinking that Cardiff had a secret service agency but then again that would be daft wouldn’t it??!

Heading over the Severn Bridge to get there was in itself a piece of comedy. Its on the M4. So you don’t have to pay to get over a bridge do you? Wrong. I was getting closer and closer with signs increasing saying £5.50 to cross – CASH ONLY, NO CARDS. Great i thought. I don’t have any cash on me. I’ll just have to blag it. Well i got to the toll booth. they wouldn’t take cards. “Any cheques?”. No. “Any Euro’s?”. I was going to Wales remember. In fact i did have, by pure chance, a €10 note in my wallet. “Yes”. Phew. “Give me that then”. Double phew. So it is clear that you can buy your way into Wales with Euros. And its still free to get out.

Anyhow I got to Voice and the CIA in good time to shoot some set up shots. They’d turned the place into a kind of big top:

Voice 2010 - The Big Top

It was awesomely colourful with 4 areas to distinguish between different sectors of Social Enterprises and it worked really very well. Not only as a spectacle but as a good talking point and ice breaker. People poured through the doors when they opened and people pored over the programs to decide on who to speak to and who to listen to:

Loving the catalogue...

The big part of the day was, obviously, saved until last. This year was the launch of the Social Enterprise Mark. Working along the same principles as the Fairtrade Mark (which in itself is a social enterprise) it means that the “Mark” can be applied to Social Enterprises if they meet specific criteria. You can read more about it here. And to launch it they had organised a few circus acts based around the rings of yellow theme. There was a hula hoop artist who wooed the crowds which was followed by a trapeze artist. The crowds were wooed and the cannons blasted yellow confetti everywhere and so it was. The Mark was launched. And i rather liked this shot of the trapeze artist….

The beautiful trapeze.

Getting back from New Zealand was a bit of a shock to the system. It was summer there so I’d got very accustomed to wearing shorts and flip-flops. In London and the UK as a whole it had been sub-arctic with heavy snow. So although the snow had gone it was still damned cold. Also – when you’ve been away for such a long time you forget what it was that you were doing before you went – couple that with the Christmas period as well and it makes it even harder.

So it was good to get my teeth stuck into some shoots and remind me who i was…or should that be am? Shoot 1 was on a grim, grey, wet and cold London afternoon – remember my head was still driving a camper van around NZ – and i headed over to Bermondsey to meet Tim Campbell. Tim is an extremely inspirational chap who rose to fame through via the London Underground network by applying for and subsequently winning the first series of The Apprentice with Alan Sugar. He now runs the Bright Ideas Trust to help people get their entrepreneurial ideas off the ground. He was to be giving a talk to a group of school kids who were setting up their own small business as a school project and whose profits would all be given to Great Ormond Street Hospital. the brief was to shoot him and the children engaging, capturing their eyes sparkle as he shared his knowledge with them and to get some good shots of him…

Tim Campbell

The children loved him as you might expect and after they’d all left i got some time alone with him to get some headshots, but i must confess that this candid shot of him is by far my favourite:

Tim Campbell

Move on a few days and I was in the offices of Divine Chocolate near Tower Bridge. This time a minister visit to a job share. The Minister for the Office of the Third Sector was learning how to be the MD of a chocolate company for a day and getting involved in a chocolate tasting and variosu meetings. Clearly the chocolate tasting was a good way to start the day as i think we can all agree from this picture!

Angela Smith MP in tasting heaven..

Luckily for me I benefitted from the tasting too by leaving with a few lovely bars of the chocolate… well worth getting your hands on some and why not take a look at what you can get right here….

Blogging while travelling around New Zealand in a campervan is unfortunately a tremendously difficult affair. I managed 1 entry from the airport on the way out and 1 entry while in Whakapapa, about to do the Tongariro crossing. For the rest of the trip coming across internet connections was a) quite hard and b) i just didn’t have the time. So i didn’t do any and now since being back i have been too busy and out of a rhythm of blogging. So here i go again…

The epic journey that was New Zealand consisted of (in no particular order): one lost bag (relocated after a week); 3,250 km of driving in our van called Nicola which we rented from Explore More (everyone else’s vans had cool names like Jaffa, and we had Nicola! I’m sure she’s a lovely lady…); endless packets of sour cream and chive crisps; speights beer, waikato draught, monteiths summer ale and tui; lots of orongo bay oysters; green lipped mussels; t-bone steaks and lamb chops from the mad butcher; camping in designated campsites; freedom camping; swimming in the sea and the lakes; hiking across the tongariro crossing in 6 hours; hiking for 24 km of the Queen Charlotte Trail (in 6 hours); doing a wine tour of the Marlborough Region; flying over the Remarkables; hiking over the Fox Glacier (for 6 hours); a boat trip around Milford Sound; fush’n'chups; pinot noir; buying icebreaker gear from the outlet store; missing lots of the amazing views as it was raining so much (worst summer in 40 years apparently); getting bitten by sandflies (lots); showering out the side of the van; sea-kayaking around the Bay of Islands and most importantly of all saying “Howareya?”… a lot (kind of instead of “Hello”).

I have put up a selection of photos from the trip on my website to give a taster and have plenty more where that came from – but for now here is my favourite shot of the trip. I hope you like it….

Chilling on Sumner Beach, Christchurch.

(Click on it to enlarge it….)

So we left the UK on Christmas Day. But when we arrived in Auckland my bag was not to be seen. The carousel stopped rolling, Jen’s bag was there, as was my tripod. but no big blue backpack. And they had no idea where it was. I filled in the forms and off we went. In the clothes i had just travelled for 28 hours in and no others to change into! So upon arrival at the Hotel de Brett we headed out to buy me some clothes. Reasonably successful mission later we crashed. Woke the following day, still no sign of the bag, and headed off to get the van. Off to the Bay of Islands. And then my blackberry packed up. So now i was without my phone and my bag. Switched to Jen’s phone and after having done the Paihia, Russell, and then Rotorua we headed to do the Tongariro Crossing. This was 8 days after we left the UK. And by some miracle my bag made it over in time for us to do the trek and me not to have to buy any more clothes! How good was it to see that bag. Words cannot describe!

Possibly the most interesting Boxing Day i’ve ever had. If you can call it a day that is. We left London at 9pm on Christmas Day and after 12 hours in the air (watching District 9 and The Time Travelllers Wife) landed in Hong Kong. At 4pm.With 4 hours to kill we went for a walk up the enormous connecting tunnel between the east and west terminals (I tried uploading a photo but just couldn’t get it to work, sorry!) and succeeded in finding some great chinese food. Dumplings, Pork Katsu escalope and Noodle soup for a rousing HKD 66 (£5.50) which aside from being very welcome also proceeded in exhausting me. 4 hours sleep on the first leg and food to digest don’t mix too well. So off to the airport lounge we scuttled. Result. An amazing massage chair for a good 20 minutes session and then a nice long shower. How welcome is that! Especially when there’s another 12 hours of flying to go. Its now 8pm. Here i now sit waiting for the gate to open, drinking a mixture of a coke, a beer and a bottle of water while the wife is off showering! Next post coming from New Zealand…

A little while ago i had the pleasure of shooting a couple who were on the brink of having a little baby. The due date was the morning of the shoot so things were a little hit and miss as to what was going to happen! All ended well however and i heard a couple of days later that they had a lovely little girl called “Coco”. The mother, Emmie, has started up a web based business in the form of a blog that covers all things wedding related and she has called herself “Little Miss Wedding”. With a strong following on Twitter and a lot of daily readers on her Blog, Emmie posted a feature on me and a wedding i shot for a client back in the summer. The wedding was in the Connemarra region of Ireland and was beautiful, so to start a grey and dreary week in London off lets inject some colour into it… Go to this link and see Emmie’s post and while you’re there take a look at the rest of her site… http://www.littlemisswedding.co.uk/index.php/wedding-photography/bundles-of-colour/

Yesterday saw me meet up with the one and only Prue Leith – original celebrity chef and founder of Leith’s School of Food and Wine and Leith’s catering. We met at her London pied-a-terre in Kensington – on the way there i had to take a diversion due to some road works and bizarrely drove by “her” cookery school (!) – and chatted over a cup of coffee while we decided on where to shoot. I had no idea that she came from South Africa – born in Cape Town and lived in Johannesburg. She sold her school and catering business a few years back and is now a writer on her 5th book!

An absolutely lovely lady who looks pretty good for a 69 year old i must say!!

Prue Leith

For all wonderful things and Prue’s life-story take a look at her website… http://www.prue-leith.com/