Last week I took the production photographs for Three Sisters at the Lyric Hammersmith.

John Lightbody as Vershinin and Romola Garai as Masha in Chekhov’s Three Sisters.

The three sisters of the play: Poppy Miller as Olga, Romola Garai and Clare Dunne as Irina.

Three sisters has 4 acts. The second one starts in near darkness, and characters come in and switch the odd lamp on or light a candle. Even with several bulbs on you can see how dark it is. I used my 85mm lens fully open at F1.2 and even then I had to put the ISO up to ISO 1600, fortunately modern digital cameras are a match for low light and the image has remarkably little noise.

Sandra Voe plays Anfisa, the family’s 80 year old nanny.

A passionate moment between Vershinin and Masha.

Please click on the thumbnail to see a larger image. Three Sisters, directed by Sean Holmes, runs until 20th February. From what I could see during the dress rehearsal it was a dark and compelling production with some excellent ideas and some brilliant acting, especially from the leads. I’m going to watch it next week and I’m looking forward to it.

Last week I photographed Ed Hall, the new Artistic Director at the Hampstead Theatre.

I took photographs of Ed inside the theatre. In this image I used off-camera flash behind the subject and 45 degrees in front of him.

Here I used two off-camera flashes placed at 45 degrees to Ed.

Ed Hall was due to be announced on the Wednesday, and I was called in on the Tuesday. Because of the strict secrecy surrounding the appointment, we had to keep Ed out of sight, so we used the parts of the theatre that couldn’t be accessed by the general public. The photo was taken in natural light at the bottom of the theatre, using my 85mm F1.2 lens. When the appointment was announced the next day it was a complete surprise, and garnered a lot of press attention.

Jack and the Beanstalk is currently running at the Lyric Hammersmith, here are some of the production photos:

Sean Kearns plays Plug and Angela Wynter plays Evelyn Greedly. You may recognise Angela Wynter from Eastenders - but I didn’t! She used to play Yolande Trueman. Obviously the stage make-up doesn’t help much, but even when I took her headshot in natural make-up, I didn’t spot her. The character must be about 15 years older than the actress, who unsurprisingly is far more glamorous in real life than on Eastenders. Needless to say the character of Evelyn Greedly is a long way away from an Eastender’s character, and Wynter played her excellently, full of energy and over-the-top menace. Sean kearns was excellent too, probably two of my favourite characters in the panto.

Martyn Ellis is excellent as Ms Wendy Windsor, the pantomime dame. The Lyric Young Company actors make up the ensemble.

Javier Marzan plays El Especial who plays the cow. So to clear up any confusion, a male actor, plays a bull, who is pretending to be a female cow. Simple.

Tom Robertson plays Jack, seen holding one of his magic beans.

To see more images double click on the thumbnail (and then double click again to see an even larger image). Included are pictures of Natalie Best, who is great as Jill, Jack’s love interest, and puppet snails, operated by the very talented Max Humphries.

The show has received a lot of press coverage and my photos have been in plenty of publications including Time Out and the Financial Times.

Jack in the Beanstalk is running until the 9th January, and I would definitely recommend it if you are after an energetic, fun, big family afternoon out.

Occasionally clients want something different at their wedding, a special personal touch that they can cherish forever. Traditionally couples have a wedding guest book where their friends and family can write their best wishes, but for couples wanting something a more distinct I offer a framed picture service. Usually I meet the couple at least a month before their ceremony and we photograph an engagement session - which means we get loads of great photos of the couple somewhere together. In the case of Mel and Ade we met in Central London and took lots of photographs of the two of them around London landmarks and they chose this as their favourite image:

I then had the photograph printed, in this case I had it enlarged to 10″x14″, and I took it to my favourite printers to have it professionally framed. What is so special about these framers is they frame it so that you can remove the glass and the frame, so that the wedding day the guests can write their best wishes on the mount.

Above you can see the picture framed for when the guests arrived. I had it framed with a 4 1/2 inch double mount and a thick black frame - obviously precise dimensions change depending on the size and colour of the photograph. After the guests had settled themselves down, the groom gave a speech and mentioned that he would like his guests to sign the frame. I had dismantled the frame by then so that people could write on it.

As you can see the frame has a double mount, a thin inner one, and a wide outer one, so that guests can write in the outside mount. Mel and Ade’s guests all wrote their best wishes for the couple. I didn’t put it back together because I left in the evening, and the celebrations were due to go on all night, but the frame was very easy to reassemble so Mel and Ade were able to do that by themselves when everyone had finished signing it. At the end of the night they had a photograph of the two of them with all their friend’s best wishes on display - rather than tucked away in a book.

At the moment I am recapping a few of the jobs I photographed in the past few months, but haven’t had time to put up here. In early November I photographed Lord Mandelson, the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, at Westminster Kingsway College.

Lord Mandelson was visiting the college as part of Colleges Week, which ran from the 9th to the 15th November 2009.

I took a selection of photographs of Peter Mandelson around the college, who spent a lot of time talking to the students and asking them about their courses. Click on the thumbnails below to see more images from his visit, or take a look at the Colleges Week website.

Two days later I was in Poplar where Lord Young, was visiting Tower Hamlets College.

Lord Young signed the airTHC plane, which Tower Hamlets are using to raise awareness of their seven environmental pledges.

Lord Young visited an A2 Media Studies class, and chatted to students cooking in a training kitchen as part of their Skills for Work course. To see a large image please click on the thumbnail.

It’s panto time again, and this year I have been photographing Jack and the Beanstalk at the Lyric Hammersmith.

L-R Tom Robertson, Angela Wynter, Martyn Ellis.  I usually take rehearsal and production photographs for theatres, but in this case the Lyric asked me to take some set up shots to send out to the press before the production shots were ready. These were taken in the Lyric Hammersmith, using the backdrop they selected, and with my studio lights.

These photographs got lots of coverage and this one appeared in the Guardian Guide in their best panto section.

We didn’t just take photographs indoors, we also went outside the Lyric where there happened to be a market and I got lots of shots of the cast by the theatre and in the market itself. These photos were used in the press as well, including Time Out. Imagine a Friday afternoon in Hammersmith with a Dame and Jack - needless to say we caused quite a stir. Some people looked a little uncertain as the Dame cavorted round the area, bantering with the stall holders, but many took it in their stride. The stall holder at Wild Country Organics was particularly good and he played along offering the Dame some of his finest produce. Click on the centre thumbail to see a large image of the outcome.

To see more of my theatre work please have a look at the Theatre section of my website.

The Christmas season is upon us, but a lot of the preparation work is done months in advance. Back in October I was asked to photograph Sandi Toksvig for her Christmas Cracker in December. At the time the design team hadn’t confirmed the look of the posters so I had to photograph Sandi in a variety of poses and costumes so that the designers had a range of images to work with.

These posters are currently visible throughout London, particularly on the Tube. Ronnie Corbett wasn’t free when Sandi was so he had to be shot separately, unfortunately I didn’t get to photograph him as I was already booked that day. Below you can see the image I took.

I photographed her using a white studio background that I hired and then set up in the Southbank Centre itself. Sandi was fantastic to work with, very enthusiastic and excellent fun. To see a few more of the images, please click on the thumbnails below. I particularly like Sandi’s elf shoes.

Sandi Toksvig’s Christmas Cracker runs from 15th December to the 24th and I’ve already booked my tickets, I would definitely recommend it.

September was an extremely busy month for me so I didn’t have time to keep my blog up to date. Here is a family portrait session I photographed from early September.

We went to Regent’s Park where Aimee was able to run around.

From left to right,  Dan, Kara, Aimee, Lee and Eileen. Lee and his partner Eileen are Aimee’s aunt and uncle.

All the running around left little Aimee tired out so she flopped down for a few moments on the grass.

To see a bigger photo please click on the thumbnail.

I tend not to blog about my corporate work too much, but a fortnight ago I was in Edinburgh for an event at the Scottish Parliament. There was a gathering of young people to raise awareness of the NSPCC’s How u feeling? campaign to reach out to more children, via ChildLine’s new online services.

My brief was to get staged photographs for the press of the young people with the MSPs, but also to capture them enjoying their day. They were given a tour of the parliament and then everyone went to Committee room 1 to do a variety of activities. Here the young people do an exercise about emotions and feelings.

Robin Harper MSP and the young people outside the Scottish Parliament, this photo appeared in the East Lothian Courier.

One of the important activities was to show the young people the new Childline website.

Various MSPs turned up including Marlyn Glen MSP and Robert Brown MSP. Also in attendance were the ChildLine Young People’s group in their green t-shirts.

Last weekend I photographed the Civil Partnership of Layla and Roz.

The couple got married at Westminster Register Office in Marylebone, London.

Layla and Roz and a snowstorm of confetti.

We got on a double decker routemaster bus to drive from the ceremony to the reception venue. Many of Roz and Layla’s friends and family had come to London for the wedding, so the bus took a picturesque journey via many of London’s landmarks, including Oxford Street, Trafalgar Square and St Paul’s.

Layla and Roz walk down Shad Thames with Tower Bridge in the background.

The couple held their reception at the Blueprint Cafe at the Design Museum

The wedding cake, made of cheese.

Layla and Roz had made everyone individual name cards with a cartoon of something significant they remembered about each guest. Layla’s sister Ashley laughs about it with the couple.

There was lots of lovely personalised touches to the wedding, including Love Hearts sweets with the name and dates on.

To see more a larger image please double click on the thumbnails.

If you would like to see more about my Civil Partnership photography please click on the Civil Partnership section of my website.