To the Power of Miami

I'm freshly back from the 80 degree sunshine of Miami were I shot the new press campaign for BARCAP ( a division of barclays bank ). The strap lines for the campaign are " To the power of " , which was wonderfully crafted by Dave Cloke and Mark Wilson @ ogilvy London. They created a wonderful visual campaign about making impossible situations real, and I've posted 3 of the campaign shots here for you to see, - I hope you like them - my favorite is the rowing boat shot.

It was a fun filled and eventful shoot - my assistant Dan spent most of the week in bed with severe food poisoning, and the weather could have been kinder to us, but as usual we made it all work, and had a lovely couple of days jetting about the waterways and harbours of Miami.

The mojitos were good and the shoot wrap at the Delano will be remembered for a long time by all of the crew that were on the shoot.

Thats just about it before Christmas hits and I'm looking forward to a couple weeks of rest. So to all of you who read my blog - Merry Christmas - have a good one.

Shanghai Delights

I'm not long back from China. After a hideous long flight from London to Shanghai ( Via a snow bound Beijing ) I found myself in the studio complex of T and W productions. I was pleasantly surprised by the facilities - not super slick, but still on a par with most hire studios around the globe. The thing I found most bizarre was the amount of assistants who ran around after me ( I counted 9 at one point ), but it did make life easier - even if a lot of it did get lost in translation.

The shoot itself was a 4 shot campaign for McCanns in Shanghai, for the chinese launch of the Corvette. I found working with the creative team at McCanns, and the post production guys at T and W pretty good and I think the result speaks for itself. ( I've enclosed one of the shots in the blog) .

Once the madness of the shoot was over, I upped sticks to downtown Pudong to get a feel for Shanghai, and I'll post some of my personal shots from this during the next week or so. Well I hope to be back again in Shanghai, it was a lot of fun - but bloody hard work.

Electric Wheels & Eastern Promise

I've just come off the back of a nice little shoot for an electric scooter which we shot round the streets of trendy Hoxton in London for 3E and I'll post some images from the project over the next couple of weeks as post production is completed.

I'm very excited to be heading off to China this coming week to shoot a studio campaign for GM China - its a corvette, so it should be an interesting week. I hope to find some time to wizz around taking some personal pictures, its been many years since I was last in China and I know Shanghai is unrecocnisable now, compared to my last visit - so watch this space and I'll let you see what I see.

New York - as I see it.

I was in New York last month on business and managed to get a weekend hanging out in manhattan, with my camera and loads of ( unusual ) free time. So I walked blocks and blocks, rode the subway miles and miles, and generally cleared my mind whilst hiding behind my camera, and I've produced a little project portfolio on the website.

I've enclosed some of the images here to wet your appetite - but check out the main project portfolio and let me know what you think.

New york project portfolio

SUBARU SHOOTING in THE LAND OF LEEKS

Freshly back from wet and windy Wales, we managed to sneak 3 days of sunshine and shooting in before the normal weather conditions returned for the rest of the shoot.

We were in Wales shooting the new Press campaign for the launch of the Subaru Legacy and Outback models. You can see some of the campaign here in this blog, and soon to follow will be a little video snap of the shoot and how it happened. There was a great crew there - Phil Haseldon doing Production, along with good old trusty Dan and ian ( fartpants ) keeping me on the straight and narrow and making sure I used the right cameras and remembered which button was the shutter release.

The Agency was CST in London, and the shoot was nicely art directed by Si Micheli with the very experienced Gordon Smith watching over the creative direction.

My favorite shot of the campaign is the splash shot which you can see here (top left), but I'm pleased with how the shots look, and retouching once again was skillfully handled by This little Fish, thanks to mark and michel for their retouching skills.

The shots have started running in the UK press, and should be fairly visible over the next 4 weeks.

Oh! I nearly forgot - real cars for a change. It was quite refreshing to go back to basics again, after so much CGI shooting over the past few years - I even managed to dust off the Rig for some tracking shots.

Vacation Snaps

Its been a mad mad few weeks, I've been in New York, and then straight on to a Subaru shoot in Wales - but more of that in a following post.

As promised I said I'd put some personal images up from my summer vacation in Italy ( and a little france ), and here they are - I'll publish another post over the next two weeks.

Latest Lurzers

I finished the summer work ( just before my vacation ), by working on a campaign for Ogilvy in London, and chasing around a deserted power station in South London.

After many attempts and a few quid slipped to the the site manager I was given access, and this let me get the backgrounds for my latest Lurzers Archive insert.

It was pretty amazing, the light was fantastic, and the structure of the old turbine hall created a post apocalyptic scenario, which I decided would hold a nice shiney audi TT 2010. The team at This Little Fish did (as usual) a fantastic job on post - thanks to Scott and Mikey for that. I hope you like it.

I've just returned this past weekend from my vacation in Italy and took some time out to take some images, and I'll do a separate blog for those when I have the images ready. Its also looking like its going to be a busy end to the summer, I've got shoots coming up in Scotland and New York, and I'll write a blog for those when they happen.

New German Agent

I took a flying visit to Frankfurt last week to meet with the german photography representative - Gunda Patzke. We spent all day going through my images and talking about photography, art and life, and I'm delighted to announce that Gunda will now be repping me in Germany.

We are busy working on new portfolios for her now, and in early September we will be showing the portfolios. For those in Germany looking to see a portfolio please go to Gundas site www.gundapatzke.com or call her directly on 0049 69 726797.

Dragons den

I spent a lot of time working on this shot for my lurzers Archive ad, and it seems to have gone down very well. I originally did the car in silver, but after a friendly nudge from some art directors I took their advice and changed it to black.

The background was shot in London and the team at This Little Fish did a great job bringing it all to life, by contributing from the early creative stages right through to the final delivery - so thanks to all the team that helped make the shot look so good.

Web update, blogs, tweets and shoots.

Yet again, I've been pretty slack at updating my website, let alone this blog, so at long last there are lots of new images on the site. There are a few minor sections to change, but mostly its looking pretty nice, and I've made the images bigger for easier viewing - I hope everyone likes it.

Then there is the blog - I will update it more frequently and keep everyone posted on what I'm up to and what shoots I'm on. Its been a quietish year so far, but i know that's been the case for everyone as we ride out this economic period, but I'll add more updates about shoots as time moves on.

Finally, after much resistance I am registered on Twitter, and I'll keep that fed with little notes as much as possible. The link for my tweets is http://twitter.com/carllyttle .

BPCAD REUNION 6/3/09

20 Years after leaving the hallowed halls of Bournemouth and Poole College of Art and Design (now the Arts Institute of Bournemouth ), I tentatively made my way to the college, for the retrospective of 50 years of photography from the students who had passed through BPCAD. I was delighted to have been asked to be part of the exhibition, and honoured to be among the likes of Nick Knight, Wolfgang Tilmans and all my old college friends who were exhibiting. The show is called from here to there and it does honour all of us past graduates, but for me personally it applauds the dedicated career of Geoff Drury ( along with Maestri, Eldridge and Fassnidge ) who inspired and taught us all those years ago, and it was amazing to get everyone together again so many years later ( I'm sure even Chris Fassnidge was looking down on us ).

There is a site to mark the exhibition - check it out here.

http://www.heretotherephoto.com/

I had a fantastic evening at the private view, and it has enthused me greatly to do what i enjoy best - taking pictures.

Blurb Book

I've been spending the past week or two sorting through endless hard drives trying to get my back catalogue sorted and I decided to publish a book of some of my recent landscapes on Blurb at the same time. I haven't seen the printed result yet, but have a look here for a preview.

http://www.blurb.com/books/594969

Hope you all like it.

2009 - Here we go

Yet again I've been really slack at doing regular blogs, and I do hope to make monthly blogs through the year. The end of the year brought some projects along in October and November and we produced some new pieces for the Nissan Xtrail, working with their new agency, which is a breath of fresh air compared to the previous agency.

Christmas has come and gone, I had a nice vacation with my family in the Caribbean and took some quite interesting night shots that I'm working on right now, and I hope to have those upline in the next month or two.

January has been slowish, I've been busy as hell with This Little Fish stuff, and We're all working on a launch of a new Nissan compact that I'm shooting end of February and there is some ads to be done for Ogilvy's during February also, so I'm going to see this month fly past also.

I also was delighted to receive the news that I've got a picture in this years AOP rewards - I'm sure it'll come to nothing, but its still nice to get pictures in the awards.

So onwards with it all, and I'm trying to stay positive despite the eternal gloom that seems to be all around the advertising industry, I'm sure there won't be quite the number of trips this year, but for sure I think it'll be busy busy busy regardless.

More News soon.