carl lyttle's blog

Johnny Marr Fender Jaguar Shoot.

2012-01-20T11:56:00.000Z

As most of you who know me will know ( seeing as I've gone on about it relentlessly ), I had the pleasure of working with one of my childhood legends, the one and only Mr Johnny Marr. I spent an epic couple of days with johnny shooting, filming and editing and really enjoyed working on the project.

So here are 2 of the films I produced for Fender, some of the press pictures and a few behind the scenes pics as well. Hope you like them, I certainly enjoyed making them.

The first film was a little 3 minute teaser

And the second was a mini documentary about the design of his new signature guitar for Fender.

Johnny Marr Fender Jag Mini Documentary

And then the press images.

And some behind the scenes fun.

2012 Here we Come

2012-01-06T16:03:00.000Z

I think 18 months without adding to a blog is a bit lame, so I have to hold my hands up and plead guilty to wearing that badge. Its been a crazy 18 months were I have watched the photography industry change direction yet again, but it seems that most of us have adapted to the change and moved forward with the change.
2011 started quite slow but from May on it was nuts and I've crossed the globe from Barcelona to Shanghai to Barcelona, back to Shanghai , then wizzing through Detroit, up and down the UK and of course Paris and the projects that I was shooting have destracted me from my blog duties and I'm going to do my very best keep the blog updated through 2012.
I worked on some great projects last year for Nissan, a few for General motors in China and a monster project for GM in the states that is being delivered as I write and was great fun to work on, and then at the opposite end of the spectrum I did a few projects for Fender guitars culminating with a piece on Johnny Marr, which was an awesome treat working with one of my childhood heroes.
The year finished at Silverstone shooting and filming for the GQ supercar awards article to be published in April and that was great to work on also.
I plan to publish all the images and film shorts from 2011 over the next few weeks and that should hopefully bring the blog right up to date before the production craziness begins again. So a big happy new year to everyone , lets hope its busy and prosperous for us all.

What's up ( pt 3 - Isuzu Rodeo - Making of )

2010-07-06T10:37:00.003+01:00

And finally for this series of blog updates, here's a little fun - a nice little film made by Rodger Stanier ( the art director on the shoot ).

ISUZU RODEO ( The Making of )

What's up ( pt 2 - Isuzu Rodeo )

2010-07-06T09:58:00.005+01:00

No sooner had I put the cosworth job to bed, when PH-WT commissioned me to shoot some tasty location images for the launch of the newly facelifted Isuzu Rodeo.

Art directed by Rodger Stanier and Holly Pallister, it was a great shoot and we found ourselves in Wales around the Devils Bridge area for the first 2 shots, then down to Sharpness Docks on the River Severn for the next shot, then finally racing down to Exmoor to shoot a dam for the background of one of the shots.

I had a lot of fun on this shoot, with some great people, and I hope the shots do the brief justice.

What's up ( pt 1 - Subaru Cosworth )

2010-07-06T09:38:00.006+01:00

I Know I know, it's been 10 weeks since my last blog, and I promised I would keep it up to date.

To make up for the silence, I have a 3 part blog going out today that brings me right back on track.

April was a quiet Month for me, but May picked up at pace and I was briefed on a nice Subaru Cosworth studio shoot, which I shot up at Junction 11 studios in Banbury ( nice studio ).

Here's the shots - hope you like the results.

PDN Award Winner

2010-04-28T11:48:00.004+01:00

I'm delighted to have been told I have been selected as a winning finalist in the advertising section of the PDN image awards in New York. The winning images are those that I featured in an earlier blog that I shot for corvette in China.

In addition to this I've been selected for the finals of the AI-AP with one of the images I shot in New York back in October, its the image of the Coney Island Cyclone from the subway train.

All being well, I'll be in New York late in May for the award night, and I'm sure I'll have some pictures from the event.

Agent News

2010-04-13T12:52:00.004+01:00

Well its been a few weeks since I entered anything on the blog, its been busy busy doing lots of housework, getting web images uploaded, printing new portfolios and generally catching up on the things that take ages and ages to put together.

I am delighted however to announce Jamie Stephen as my new agent/rep for the UK, and his details are :

www.jamiestephen.com

tel : +44 20 7228 6667

I'm really very excited about working with Jamie and look forward to working with him.

Also on the agent front I'll soon be announcing new reps in other territories around the world.

Yamaha Campaign Images

2010-03-10T16:57:00.003Z

At last the embargo on the Yamaha images I shot in New Zealand has been lifted and I can show the project. The campaign was created and art directed by Mike Boekholt, and the concept was commissioned and nicely handled by the creative force of Two Fish in Amsterdam.

I'd also like to thank Mark Bullen for his endless hours of retouching on this job, and for having the patience and vision to bring it altogether for me.

Shanghai Windows

2010-03-08T10:49:00.003Z

Just a quick blog with some images I took when I was working in Shanghai at the end of last year.

Surfs Up

2010-02-26T10:50:00.003Z

Some recent personal pictures from Fuertaventura - hope you like them.

Seminar and Exhibition time - Gecko Advertising Festival

2010-02-25T12:47:00.004Z

Those who know me, know I have a love for Italy and spend as much time as a can chilling out in the Ligurian Hills, and I was delighted to be invited to present a 3 day seminar this summer in the wonderful medieval village of Apricale.

The Apricale Commune are hosting a photographic advertising festival http://www.geckofestival.it/workshop.html . The festival is to be called the Gecko festival, which ties in with the Lucertola (lizzard) association that the village has. Apricale has been a mecca for italian artists for years and houses many talented artists and exhibitions and I'm honoured to be able to present the seminar.

The seminar will be hosted over a 3 day period 5th, 6th and 7th June and will cover in detail the subject of CGI car photography. I'm hoping to make it as hands on as possible and look forward to presenting it. My presentation is the only english speaking one of the festival, but I'll have to brush up on my italian just in case.

For more information on the festival contact Susanna Perachino susanna.perachino@gmail.com or call her on +39 347 628 6890.

Here's the exert about my seminar.

CARL LYTTLE 3D Car Production (genere scatto: automobili) 3 giorni da sabato 5/06 a lunedì 7/06
	Recipient of many high profile industry awards and at the forefront of digital and CGI photographic image making, London based Carl Lyttle first fell in love with photography in his native Belfast. After graduating at Poole College of Art and Design, he assisted the renowned advertising photographer Christopher Joyce. Working mainly with automotive clients, like Nissan, Mercedes, Mitsubishi, Landrover and Lexus, he also has many other high profile global campaigns under his belt, such as Barclays, BAT and Microsoft. His work in digital imaging has now moved into the field of high-end, innovative CGI imaging. This complements his automotive and landscape skills, and in 2007 Carl was a co founder of the ground-breaking CGI house “this little fish”. www.carllyttle.com

In addition to all this I have been asked to host an exhibition in the castello in the heart of the village, and I'll provide all the info on that as the exhibition curation takes shape.

Whats been happening ?

2010-02-25T12:44:00.000Z

Its hard to believe that we are 8 weeks into the year already, and its been a crazy busy start to 2010, which is why I've not made so many blog entries of late, but I do intend to change that as I've got lots of content to share with you over the next week or two..

I started the year shooting a Subaru Ad for CST in London, which was shot under the worst weather conditions I've worked in for a long time. We shot the car in the snow and -5 degrees c weather conditions of south London, and by the power of post production it ended up looking like spring.

Almost immediately I was off to New Zealand for a shoot for the new Yamaha Tenere, shooting a series of backgrounds, which again was hampered by terrible weather - mostly sea fog and heavy rain ( its the worst summer new Zealand has had in a long long time ), but we got some gritty abstract backgrounds all the same. From there we headed straight to Amsterdam where the bike units were to be shot, and even though the Amsterdam weather cold and snowy, we were in the studio all tucked up nice and warm.

The Post production on the campaign is nearly finished, and as soon as the press embargo is lifted off the images I'll get them straight up here for all to see.

Currently I'm waiting on confirmation for a couple of projects, but in the meantime I've been working on a few new personal images and will get those upline this coming week.

Corvette for China

2010-01-20T10:09:00.003Z

I just received these images from the agency in China that I shot the Corvette campaign for, and wanted to share them with you. Retouching was handled by T&W in Shanghai, and I think tiger (their main retoucher)has done a really good job on the images.

Its been a crazy mad time recently, I'll write another blog entry about all of that in the next few days.

In the meantime - I hope you like them

To the Power of Miami

2009-12-21T17:07:00.013Z

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

2009-11-26T09:53:00.005Z

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

2009-11-05T11:55:00.005Z

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.

2009-10-20T13:30:00.001+01:00

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

2009-10-19T16:43:00.009+01:00

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

2009-10-09T18:04:00.005+01:00

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

2009-09-08T17:40:00.006+01:00

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

2009-07-24T16:51:00.002+01:00

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

2009-07-24T16:34:00.004+01:00

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.

2009-06-12T12:14:00.003+01:00

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

2009-03-10T22:52:00.002Z

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

2009-03-06T09:48:00.004Z

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

2009-02-02T00:04:00.002Z

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.

The Summer report

2008-10-14T11:22:00.003+01:00

I know, i know - I've been really crap at keeping the blog up to date and the promised regular updates, so hopefully this will bring me right back up to date and I can keep on top of regular blogs.

Since the last entry in April its been a crazy crazy summer May June and July was car season time when everybody wants to shoot. i started doing a lot of studio work in paris on the Nissan Pathfinder and navara updates before shooting the outdoor sections in June. ( unusually with real cars for a change and not CAD data ). Most of July was was spent working on the new brochure and ad launches of the Qashqui +2, which we shot half in Paris and the rest in London - working closeley of course with the talented 3d artists at "this little fish" cgi house, who produced some fine imagery and superb renders, and of course art direction from Lou Setchao of TBWA paris.

August was equally as crazy, i shot a couple of CGI brochures for Toyota with art director Paul valentine from publicis blueprint. We completed facelift brochures for the Aygo and Yaris models which we shot in Paris and The South of France. We had a great production with continental productions ( nico and his team ) , even if they let it rain too much and covered us in hilltop fog, the results look great and i'll have a few on the site soon ( i promise ).

I took a long vacation after the Toyota shoot with the family and returned to go straight into an O2 campaign which was shot at the O2 Arena doing super wide 360 degree interiors of the VIP rooms at the arena in a quirky way.

And here we are now mid October with the world falling apart, lets hope it doesn't slow down too much for us and we can continue making images.

Desert, dust and heat

2008-04-03T12:26:00.000+01:00

I returned yesterday from the Middle east after a week of shooting . We had a great shoot for Ogilvy, after casting nearly every chinese looking model in the region we found our models and everything worked out. The heat was intense, averging 40 degrees c, which was hard to work in as the models were getting roasted.

After the commercial shoot was finished i headed out to the deserts propper ( after shooting in dubai city - which will be amazing in a few years when the massive construction finishes ) to shoot some 3d environments and backplates. The producer ( god bless you Alon ) went a sand dune too far and we got beached in the middle of the desert for a few hours before being rescued by a 4x4 tour team. However we manged to get some good pictures, keep your eye on the main web portfolios for those, and I'll also put up a mini project from the trip under the projects section of the site.

So for the next while I'll be in London to finish the ogilvy shoot, and get some housekeeping done, and i'll update the blog soon as i can.

CGAM 2008

2008-03-15T23:36:00.000Z

Freshly back from CGAM 2008 in Hollywood, rather tired and jetlagged, but a great week. the conference was quite extraordinary and once again in my opinion clearly indicating that those photographers not adopting CGI will be out of work sooner than they think.

I had the nervous pleasure of speaking on the HDRI panel and presenting a small talk to the gathered masses on how I work with 3d technology in the field, and that received a great response.

So after the debrief and the starry hieghts of LA, its back to reality and I'm preparing for a shoot in Dubai, more on that soon.

New Website Live

2008-03-05T01:02:00.000Z

The new website went live today after nearly 4 years since it was last changed, i hope its liked and I promise to update it on a regular basis.

Carl's First Blog

2008-02-25T15:56:00.000Z

So this is it, the first ever entry in the Carl Lyttle Blog world. I’ve been pondering for ages as to whether to do a blog or not, but feel now it is an essential addition to my website and i intend to update it on a regular basis. This first blog is a synopsis of all that happened in the past year. 2007 was a huge busy year for me, commercially I travelled and shot in locations all over the world in places like, California, Nevada, Canada, Thailand, Paris, Barcelona, Utah, Idaho, Iceland, turkey, scotland and back to california to name but a few for clients ranging from Nissan to Barclays and lexus. 2007 also seen me enter the world of CGI photography and I co founded the cutting edge CGI house called This Little fish and it has in a year grown to already a formidable market force. I found the shift in the industry towards CGI quite incredible and i’m very excited as to how my imagery is moving forward in this direction and the visual opportunities CGI and photography jointly offer. It was a year also of carrying the banner for hasselblad as the UK master 2007 for them, a title that I was proud to have and i also enjoyed being in Stokholm, gottenborg and oslo to speak on behalf of hasselblad to thier collected delegates. The year also had some of my images accepted for the AOP photography awards. Now on to 2008, already crazy in the amount of work going on, but great fun, and I’m off to LA in March with this little fish to attend the CGAM 2008 cgI conference and also speak on the HDRI imaging panel at the show. Finally for this first blog the new web site ( some 4 years after the current site ) will be launched in time for CGAM and will host a completely new selection of images.