Last month I was asked by Monocle to shoot their May cover.
Richard Spencer Powell came up with a great idea to illustrate their ‘Survey on the best villages and hamlets to set up shop in’,by using Playmobil figures to represent the different trades, I had forgotten how good they were the attention to detail is fantastic! I’ll be adding those to Poppy’s Christmas list as soon as she’s old enough. I’m convicted we also did the worlds smallest beer shoot for the shot of the hand holing the beer stein, We wanted that authentic look so we used real lager in the tiny plastic steins I had to use a syringe and a staple blade to get the frothy head on top!
Another fun cover all in all!
press
desktop delights
Last month I shot a great feature for Monocle Magazine on things to sharpen up your desk. They found some fantastic products to make your desk the envoy of the office.
Suffice to say all the items we shot were lovely and I wanted to take them all home!
As well as that I shot my regular inventory shoot with lots more lovely products.
images © David Sykes 2016 All rights reserved.
Architect @ work
Before Christmas Friends & Co asked me to produce a series of photos to promote the ARCHITECT@WORKs exhibition in London.
The shots were a series of studies of materials that some of the exhibitors produce. They enlisted the talents of stylist Despina Curtis to help me bring it all to life, it was great to work with Despina she created some lovely sculptures with the materials we had.
images © David Sykes 2016 All rights reserved.
President cheese
Takeaway time.
images © David Sykes 2015 All rights reserved.
My latest work for Just Eat has been up and around the country for the last few weeks, it was shot for the lovely guys at The Red Brick Road.
The shoot was lots of fun with a studio full of popadoms and the smell of cooking king prawns! We all snacked well that day!
The just eat app has been very useful too as we moved into our new house recently and finding the best takeaways was great as it’s taken a while to unpack all the kitchen stuff!!
Happy and healthy new year
images © David Sykes 2015 All rights reserved.
Happy New year to you all, so here we are another year, hope everyone has a happy and prosperous one!
The end of last year was a very busy one work wise, so much so I didn’t get a chance to blog much so after this one I’m going to post all my latest news in a flurry of posts, so i apologies in advance!
So Kale is the latest super food and I was delighted to help promote Florette’s new salad baby kale for the Now agency.
Creative director Lee Smith came up with some great ads and when I saw the layouts I knew they were right up my street.
It was a fun and very healthy shoot with lots of lovely baby kale left over for us all to have lots of very healthy salads in the days that followed!
The finished ads are running now in magazines and on 48 sheet posters. Grab a bag and help that healthy start to the new year 😉
Christmas all wrapped up.
images © David Sykes 2015 All rights reserved.
Before Christmas I was asked by BBH to shoot a Christmas poster for British airways. It was great to work with Harry Orton and Robin Warman again, they came up with a clever idea to use the belts as a bow.
The poster was used on their 96 sheet poster site that welcomes people as they arrive at Heathrow airport as well as 48 poster sites.
Tools for life
images © David Sykes 2015 All rights reserved.
Last year I was asked to shoot for my favourite issue the double issue with all the inspiration for christmas in it.
This year was slightly different it was a called ‘tools for life’ taking different places in our everyday life and helping out with the best tools for each situation. As always it was great to see all the fantastic things that Josh found from all over the world.
I also shot the cover for the travel top 50, a lovely paper craft aeroplane.
Hello wispa
images © David Sykes 2015 All rights reserved.
So August turned out to be a chocolatey month, I shot for Toblerone and wispa in the space of weeks.
I can’t share my Toblerone work yet as it won’t be out until later in 2015 but I can share my Wispa work.
It was great to work with the guys at Fallon again having shot some work for George earlier in the year.
It was also great to get to work with the talented Paul Baker who has help me out in the past with his wonderful chocolate and food creations.
It was a fun shoot to work on and as wispa was always one of my favourite chocolate bars when i was a kid, so having a few left over at the end was great!
ebay saves the day!
images © David Sykes 2014 All rights reserved.
Earlier this year I was asked by Adam & Eve DDB to shoot a new campaign for ebay.
Nick and Sam from A&E DDB came up with some great and funny ideas showing how ebay can turn a bad situation into a great one!
It was a lovely shoot to do, the funniest one was the Goldfish we had a goldfish handler from Amazing Animals to help keep the star of the show under control!
BTW no animals were harmed in the making of this as he was a trained stunt goldfish!
Babies and golden lions
images © David Sykes 2014 All rights reserved.
During last year’s Marmite ‘Neglect’ campaign, one of the stars of the TV commercial was the ‘Baby One’ jar of Marmite. So much so, that Marmite produced a limited edition run of Baby Ones.
Nick and Tom (the creatives behind the campaign), thought it would be great to take a series of pictures showing how loved and cared for the Baby One is now, post rescue.
They asked if I wanted to help with their personal project and I jumped at the chance, and, with the styling talent of Caterina Gobbi, we created a series of little scenes of life after rescue. The result are these lovely, heartwarming shots of Baby Ones that have found new, loving homes.
I also had some great news at the beginning of the summer the ‘Neglect’ campaign I shot last year won some Gold Lions at this years Cannes advertising awards for best outdoor and best press advert.
Sweet commission
images © David Sykes 2013 All rights reserved.
Last month I was asked by Karmarama to shoot their new campaign for Hartley’s jam and jelly. When the layouts came through I was super excited as they wanted to make a type ad but it was to be all made out of their jam and jelly, it was right up my street!
They wanted it to be shot in camera as much as possible, which is just the kind of challenge I like.
I asked Peta O’Brien to help with this challenge. Peta and I have been working together for years, and I knew her extensive experience would be invaluable with a project like this.
Peta came up with an ingenious way to shoot the jam and jelly in one, and we asked model maker Paul Baker to help work out how to make it a reality. I knew that the job was in capable hands and when the forms arrived to fill in the jelly I was super excited, they looked like a work of art before we’d even begun to fill them with jam and jelly.
Hartley’s sent over more jam than I’d ever seen in all my life, but it was all needed, and it took most of the prep day for Peta to fill the mould for the jam.
The actual shoot was lots of fun, a couple of long sweet and sticky days, but it was all worth it as the end result looked fantastic. It was really good to work with such a fun creative team and client, Robin the art director kept us entertained all day.
The big jelly Letters Peta made were amazing, they had a great texture to them, everyone enjoyed playing around with them once we had wrapped (a little too much, as quite a bit ended up stuck to the studio celling!)
The finished ads are out and about in the UK press right now.
Here’s some behind the scenes photos from the shoot.
images © David Sykes 2013 All rights reserved.
Immaculate conceptions
images © David Sykes 2013 All rights reserved.
Last month I was approached by Ryan Watson, from Shots magazine, to see if he could interview me, I jumped at the chance! Shots is a great Magazine. It has featured some of best photographers and Directors of the past few decades, including some of my favourites.
It’s always a bit nerve wracking being interviewed, but I had nothing to worry about it – it turned out to be a lovely piece and, I am very pleased with the end result (thanks Ryan).
It’s also nice to have so many of my shots featured, both new and old.
When the article’s on their website, I’ll add a link – in the meantime go get a copy! 😉
Drum roll please!
image © David Sykes 2013 All rights reserved.
I was really pleased to be asked by Jessica Dance to collaborate with her on the fantastic paper drum for the ‘drum roll’ D&AD awards cover in this months Creative Review.
I’ve been working with Jess on a new personal series of work and it was great to work with her again on a commission look out for the new series to be shown soon.
image © David Sykes 2013 All rights reserved.
First past the post
image © David Sykes 2013 All rights reserved.
image © David Sykes 2013 All rights reserved.
Last friday my latest work hit the news stands in the form of an advertising wrap on the Sport magazine for the Racing Post.
I was commissioned by the talented folks at Sell Sell. They wanted to make an image containing all the essentials one would need at the races, including all the different ways to get info from the Racing Post.
It was a fun day the lovely Katie Cordell sourced some fantastic props to make up our gents outfit it was all very fancy, it was like a high end Bond Street store in the studio for the day!
I even made my self useful by finding the hip flask we used in the shot while I was away in Salzburg for a long weekend it was one of the few things not to have a Mozart on it!
Monocle, the gift that keeps on giving
All images © David Sykes 2012 All rights reserved.
It’s that time of year again the gift guide issue of Monocle and this year it’s themed. All the gift ideas are from vienna (who knew they made so many cool things!).
I also shot some of the new Monocle mechanise they are selling this christmas, they have there own umbrella now and I have to say it’s probably the best made umbrella I’ve ever seen but if you’re thinking of getting me one for christmas don’t I have a tenancy to lose them!
We had lots of fun with paper and boxes this issue and I thought Richard spencer-powells choice of colours for the boxes worked so well I had to give them there very own photo.
It’s win win all round.
All images © David Sykes 2012 All rights reserved.
My latest Advertising work for Fallon is up and about around the UK.
It was shot for Cadburys who are helping you to send a message of encouragement to team GB and you get to eat their lovely Chocolate so a win win situation all round!
We built a giant pin board in the studio then pinned hundreds of cards to it, a few prick fingers later this was the result.
If you run out of chocolate easter eggs over the weekend grab a bar of Cadburys Dairy milk and write team GB a message of support.
The final frontier…
All images ©David Sykes 2011 All rights reserved.
One of my latest shots is up on poster’s for You Tube’s space lab. I worked with Aidan Sharkey at Toaster.
You Tube are asking people to come up with a science experiment for space and upload a video explaining it to YouTube. If the idea wins, it will be performed on the International Space Station and live streamed on YouTube to the world!
It was a fun shoot to work on, the helmet was a genuine nasa helmet, shipped all the way from America for the shoot so had to be handled with care!
Hellmann’s with a Spark
All images ©David Sykes 2010 All rights reserved.
My latest work for Hellmann’s mayonnaise is now running in the press and up on posters in the U.K.
I was working with the excellent art director Guilherme Nobrega at ogilvy.It was a fun shoot although the studio did smell of garlic for a week after!
Back to work
All images ©David Sykes 2009 All rights reserved.
New work out now for Honda working with Wieden & Kennedy London the creative team were Fabian Berglund and Ida Gronblom.
It also was awarded the independent best in show link
Heinz Ads make it into Archive
All images ©David Sykes 2009 All rights reserved.
My heinz campaign for AMV BBDO working with the creative team Pete Davies and Adam Rimmer has made it into the latest Lurzers archive.
Latest Lurpak campaign
All images © David Sykes 2009 All rights reserved.
My latest work for lurpak is running this week on billboard posters and in the press.