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Elbow

Got the call on Friday afternoon, could I get over to RTE at 9pm to shoot a cover image of Elbow for Hot Press. They were appearing that night on The Late Late Show and I could have 5 minutes to shoot them before they went on. Got there about 8.30pm and was shown the space I could shoot them in. Mmmm lovely, long narrow corridor with piles of junk and chairs in it. It opened out at the end, so I could put up the paper background I brought with me.

While I'm setting up, the members of The Commitments were passing by on the way to make-up, which was fine, but I know some of them and they all wanted a chat and I was frantically trying to set up lights etc before Elbow arrived. The record company contact asked if I wouldn't mind taking a shot of them with Ryan Tubridy (the Late Late Show host) and the platinium discs they were being presented with for the last album "The Seldom Seen Kid" (a beautiful album, one of my favourites). I saw a red leather chair I liked and thought it could be good for the group shot, as with my limited background paper, I would need to get them all in very close together. I was just testing the lights when they arrived with Ryan Tubridy too. Ryan has about 1 minute before the start of the show, so I ask Guy, the singer, to sit in the chair and I quickly arrange Ryan and the rest of the band around him with the framed discs, a couple of test shots with the lights, that'll have to do, bang, bang, Ryan's gone.

So, just about to set up the group shot for Hot Press and Guy informs me, he doesn't really want to sit in the chair for the group shot. Ok, no problem, aaaah! except he's taller than the others and I'm not sure if I have enough space for 5 people on my background. Ok guys, squeeze in, closer, closer, closer! Just about. All the while, behind me, the manager, record company people and others are talking to the band, cracking jokes, commenting on various peoples heights etc. Not the most conducive atmosphere for a photo shoot, but needs must. Bang, bang and the band are leaving. I grab Guy and ask if I could just take a few shots of him on his own, he kindly agrees and I even get him to sit in the chair for one! And just like that, they're all gone, leaving me in a hyper sweating mess.

I pack up and retire to the green room for a beer and watch The Commitments talk and perform live on the screen, while hearing them booming through the wall. As I am leaving they are all filing out into the corridor too, to go outside to be photographed by the shivering freelance photographers, who have been waiting there since before I arrived. Hot Press is out tomorrow.

It's Alive!!

After years of procrastination, months of work, days of worry, minutes of sleep and seconds of.....?

Anyway, I have a brand spanking new website, with everything now in the one place, Commercial work, Covers, Ads, Fashion, Beauty, Families, Blog and much more.

I'd love to hear your comments and constructive criticisms.

Life Magazine "How We Met"

This is my second job for Life and unfortunately they printed the rough proofs by mistake instead of the final retouched and polished images. A little disappointing, but here is what they should have looked like.

Brian O'Driscoll

Got a call from Roisin in Hot Press, could I shoot Brian O'Driscoll in their offices at 2pm today? She was heading out to buy a rugby ball for him to sign and them to use in a competition. So I had a think about what I could do image wise and I had an idea to have him hold the ball with his middle finger, so it looks like he's flipping the bird (as our American cousins say).

With a late studio shoot arrival and one thing and another, I was running late, cue increasingly panicy calls from Roisin "are you here yet"? (ooops, still in my studio, downloading memory cards), "Are you here yet"? (just pulling into the carpark down the road). Anyway, I literally just had all the lights set up and ready to go when Brian walked in. Phew!

He didn't have much time (22 minutes to be exact) but was very nice and happy to pose with the ball the way I wanted him to. He just couldn't bend his ring finger due to tendon damage, he tried to bend it more using his little finger, but as you can see, could only get about half way.

Andrew from Hot Press acted as my (star struck) assistant and held the top of the ball in place and I removed his fingers afterwards, though I needn't have bothered, as they cropped out the top of the photo anyway. The New Year off to a good start!

Lorraine Keane VIP Cover Feature

Really enjoyed this cover shoot for VIP Magazine. We shot it in the presidential suite of The Westin Hotel in Dublin. Lorraine is great fun to work with and very down to earth. Her 2 sisters are a Hair and Make-Up team and both very beautiful too. They did some great work with the different looks they created. My favourite is the smokey eyes look against the curtains and on the couch. For a bit of fun, I hired a smoke machine. At one stage it was pouring out the window and I expected the Fire Brigade at any minute, but worryingly no sign of them!

Jennifer Maguire

Jennifer Maguire was on The Apprentice with Alan Sugar a couple of years ago and has now re-invented herself as a TV presenter. She told some great stories about her time on The Apprentice, most of them unrepeatable, but as an insight into the way TV works and the way they edit things, very interesting.

Sleep deprivation seems to have been part of the plan to wear down the applicants. Jennifer told me, after being up since 5am and going on to win the task, the "winners" had to return to the house and get into their party gear so they could shoot their "reward", a dinner cooked by Jean Christope Novelli. Sounds good, doesn't it? This was at 3am! and they had to be back in the boardroom at 6am. Nice.

This was shot as a fashion shoot for Hot Press, out today.

That's it, I'm moving to Zurich!

No, not really! This was a great advertising job to get. Zurich Pensions liked my portfolio and selected me to shoot this campaign. The hardest part was casting it. They were quite specific about the type of people they wanted for each ad and it took me a long time trawling through all the model agencies books to find just the right look. Then it was a lot of test shots and more test shots and finally the shoot. I shot all the models in the studio, with a great team of art director, stylist, hair and make-up. The location images for the backgrounds were all shot on Bull Island and Dollymount Strand and everything was comp'd together afterward. A hairdryer provided the windswept hair. It's great to open the Sunday paper and see these jumping off the page. More of these please!

Sharon Corr

Photographed the beautiful Sharon Corr of The Corrs for the latest Hot Press cover in my studio. We had such a laugh together. I was flirting like mad with her to get her to open up and give me a real expression and at one stage I said, "Sharon, you're laughing just a little too hard at my attempts to woe you, you're going to give me a complex to go with all my other ones" What's so funny about "You know you want to"???

Her brother Jim Corr was in my backing band for a little while during my music days and I remember asking him if he wanted to form a band together. He said no, he was working on something with his sister, which was Sharon! So I told her, it was all her fault that I'm here and she's there and it should have been me and Jim!

Like I said, we had a laugh.

She wants me, bigtime!

4 in 1 Hot Press Covers

Only 2 weeks ago I mentioned that I had 2 magazine covers on the newstands at the same time and said I'd have to go for the hat trick! Little did I know that I'd skip 3 and go straight for 4!

Well, it's a bit of a cheat really. Hot Press have issued 4 versions of the same issue with 4 different covers. Each one is a finalist in Guinness's Our Thursday (Arthur's Day, get it) They are flip covers too, which means there is a cover on the back of the main cover.

It was a very busy day, we shot all the bands in my studio and they did their interviews here too, so at one point I think there was about 20 people here. Normally it's very quiet and serene here, not that day.

Hot Press wanted various cover options which meant I had 25 different set ups to shoot. With and without instruments, white background & gold background, singer on their own (with and without instrument), singer with band and more!

Very tiring, and hard to remember if I'd shot all the variations, but I tried to keep the same energy for the last set up as I did for the first, otherwise it wouldn't be fair on the last band (bet you can't tell which one I shot last). I had an early night that night.

Who's on the main front cover? My very best friends The Script.

Who shot it? Not me.

Did I say my very best friends? I meant my very ex best friends!

Newstand

This is a 1st for me. Two magazine covers on sale at the same time! Got to go for the hat trick.

Glenda VIP

I was really chuffed when VIP magazine rang to say Glenda Gilson, was being featured in the next issue, had requested that I be the photographer for the shoot. I get on really well with Glenda, she’s a real pro. It was fantastic to work with such a top team on the shoot, Paula Callan O’Keefe (make up), Michael Leong (hair & millenary) Alison McGilligan (stylist) & Elaine Prendergast (VIP Editor)

We shot it in an afternoon at the new Gibson Hotel next to the O2 in Dublin. Locations were limited as they didn’t want it to look like a hotel, but I think we managed to get enough for the feature. This issue is on the shelves now!

VIP has just asked me to do another shoot, with another beautiful Irish woman who I can’t name just yet!

Fight Like Apes

A wedding with a difference! We had such a laugh doing this new Hot Press cover shoot. MayKay and Pockets from Fight Like Apes or FLApes as they are known, were game for anything. The scary thing was, the dress we borrowed from Oxfam actually fitted Pockets! And he seemed a little too comfortable in it for my liking (joke).

If you look carefully, you'll see that MayKay isn't actually holding him up, she wouldn't have the strength, so I propped him up on some posing stools and covered it with the train of the dress. They have a great video that someone made for them using Lego, check it out HERE.