April 2011

Morning shot’s outside my hotel window on Lake Geneva. Well I have worked in Geneva a couple of times before but never stayed on the lake, the shoot I am doing today is just outside Nyon which lies just north east of Geneva and small old town and in true Swiss style every thing in its place and very very tidy, it seems that ever bit of water in Switzerland weather in a water butt, a lake or water-feature seems to have just come straight from the Evian bottling plant, it is so clean.  Watch out for Mont Blanc the highest peak in the Alps, in the background of some of the images.

In Switzerland this week, well Courchevell actually and I discovered that they do address here by altitude, quite sensible, don’t know what happens when you get to a flat bit…but there again, I don’t think there is any flat bits around here.

Met some very nice people that look after the chalet we were shooting and a chef that cant cook, only joking Pete just checking you are reading the blog, a great chef that looked after us very well and had a keen eye for a photo. So a big thank you to all for making the chalet look at its best the day before it all got packed away as the season had finished.

Been shooting in Beirut for the last 4 days for the very talented Annabel Kassar she has just finished a very imaginative restaurant for a well know North African restaurant-er, what I didn’t know was that Annabel has a couple of bars/restaurants herself and also a fabulous lighting range have a look for yourself Annabel Kassar I must just say a big thank you to Isabelle, she was my client rep but much more….. Arabic interpreter, city guide and stylist……she even took me home for dinner to meet her husband Christoph who happens to run the lighing side of the business.

“A civilisation is a heritage of beliefs, customs, and knowledge slowly accumulated in the course of centuries…” that’s the opening line on the Surya Samudra website, I was there the other day shooting a little travel thing for a UK mag. I was very taken with the place, the setting and the very helpful staff. http://www.suryasamudra.com

When I live in India I have a constant ping pong game going on in my mind about what I think I should be getting, being told, served, having done, etc etc, the fact is to live successfully and happy you need to lower your exceptions and think about things in a different way, as a man from the western world that’s very good for me when I return to the western buzz. Let me try to explain, firstly you need to start with the mind-set that most local Indians they live very much for today, it is a way to survive in so much compertition, that means they are not interested in what you are going to give them tomorrow, just what you are going to buy/give them today and that normally means you paying skin tax and that means as much as they can extract from you, that’s the deal, all part of living here.

The 2nd is the way we look at yourself, I choose not to shave all week and go to a barber very Friday for a shave, my neighbour shaves very day and says to me when we meet in the street why do you have so much money and care so little about yourself, he could have a point but our values are very different and that’s how most things are here.

What we see as dirty they don’t, what we see as relaxed they sometimes see as disrespectful. Let me end the post with a couple of images from my currant barbers, it’s a couple of weeks ago when I took a fried in who was staying with us. I don’t see a dirty old barbers shop any more, just see Vipen the barber and is old barbers table and chair all out of rose wood, I love the way he has taken an old TV stuck it on the wall and uses it as a cupboard. I love India and all that she has in store for me and I thank her for making me take off my western rose tinted glasses and making me be able to look at the world with more understanding eyes.

what will they think of next….Yes it is a commercial for a new cell phone – the Touch Wood SH-08C – but it is a very cool concept and it was shot on the Canon EOS 7D (reviews) (we verified with the videographer)! Conceived by Morihiro Harano of Drill inc. from Japan, the video simply shows a wooden ball rolling down a series of wooden blocks to play Bach’s Cantata 147 – “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring.” Simple, yet very effective.

Funny I live in this house for nearly four winters now and have never really shot the house, must be a bit like a barber with scruffy hair. Well as we are moving next week I thought I would cut some of the beautiful flowers that we have grown, one of the biggest and most spectacular Heliconia or the lobster-claws other common names are wild plantains, or false bird of paradise. Just shows you what flowers can do in an interior, plan simple interior add some flowers and you have something for a magazine.