So I nearly missed out on putting Julian forward for a really cute food brief last week because I always completely forget that he can shoot food! He used to shoot food for Vogue Entertaining and Travel before we met, but I always assume that he had no life before me, and I never remember that. Hell, he even shot a McOz once! This is something he just shot with the lovely Garreth of FATAIM. It’s for Garreth’s mate’s cafe in Bondi and it was a bit of pure fun. Garreth conceptualised it and hand made all of those origami napkin mushrooms. They’re both such clever sausages. Pun intended.
God, I was so excited about blogging this job, but now I am a bit disappointed. Julian shot this for Rhodes Wingrove for the IPA accountants professional body. He did an amazing job of tailoring this to an impossible format and it is COMPLETELY lost on my blog. It was a complicated job and Julian did the post himself. The shot is, you would think, a classic stock shot, but with the media it would have been totally unaffordable. It also didn’t exist in the format. So Julian used his personal image library from the Tignes/French glacier job for Beechams, and a stock shot of the peak, and shot the climber in studio. It really works well as a massive mural. I saw it at the airport yesterday and it looked really grand. I am sorry you can’t really see it in all its glory here. There are two more similarly amazing shots in this series including Julian’s recent trip to Dover to document the cliffs that represent to challenge of swimming the channel.
This one is a bit of a tricky one to explain. Julian was approached by Adam Novak and John McCabe at BWM Dubai to produce an ad for the Dubai Lynx awards. The job was to take the Palm Island and turn it into a light globe. Julian collaborated with Willie from Cursor Ctrl and I guess you could say essentially art directed the image. A lot of assignments are going this way, using part stock imagery and part image-making-skills which is where Julian comes in. It’s a real niche for Julian as there aren’t that many photographers out there who can manage that level of post and visualise and piece together a job from beginning to end. Huge thanks to Willie for an amazing job as usual.
I don’t know whether it’s patriotism or ego but there’s not a photographer in this country who doesn’t want to shoot for QANTAS. For a photographer it’s akin to Nicole Kidman being put on a postage stamp. This was one of those great simple ideas with really nice and simple art direction. No butchering of the image or scary “look at moi” artwork. Big thanks and well done to Kathy McKinnon. It would be giving away trade secrets if I told you that she pulled this look off for under $500 in props, but hey, what the hell, we’ve all had to do it and we’re going to have to do it a lot more often in future. It looks super classy so who cares!
In another ironic turn, Julian – just another one of the uninsured masses – has shot the latest MBF campaign. You might have seen it instore at one of MBF’s shopfronts. Apparently MBF and their practitioners treat their clients like celebrities. They’re doing a great job to banish the very funny image I have of Steve Martin playing Orin Srivello DDS. If you haven’t seen it, please please please click this for some Monday giggles.
As if it isn’t bad enough that we now have to drive a family car rather than our Vespas and Triumph Thruxtons, Julian is now shooting family cars as well as being behind the wheel. Thankfully the art director was as gorgeous and talented as Beverly D’Angelo, so the concepts were really clever and the shots look amazing. Have a look at the billboard next time you’re on the M5 in your Kluger with two screaming kids in the back. Or just scroll down. The last one was shot in our backyard, the Southern Highlands.
