The guys at monocle asked me to shoot there May issue cover and I got to shoot my favourite suitcase in the process! I’ve shot Rimowa suitcase a lot of times for Monocle over the years and every time I’m alway impressed with how good they are quality wise and what a joy to shoot as a still lifer!
A dozen dead roses
It’s soon Valentines day, a day for which 250 million roses get produced and in the UK alone around £1.9 billion gets spent on flowers. So I thought it apt to share my latest personal project ‘A dozen dead roses’.
It’s a study of how the beauty of roses remains even after they’ve died. Shot at the end of the day as the sun sets the light change brings warmth back into the rose petals.
Tasty treats with shortlist magazine.
At the end of last year shortlist magazine asked me to shoot some lovely food for them. A super tasty bibimbap perfect for the detox in the new year and some alternative BLT sandwiches invented by Max the genius behind Max’s sandwich shop. The shoot was great fun and I got to work with the talented Rob Morris who styled all the food, his stack of BLT sdwiches was a feat of engineering!
Sainsbury's every bit of Christmas campaign
My latest campaign for Sainsbury's is out and about in the run up to the big day!
It was great to work with the guys from Wiedens again, it was a busy shoot taking place in August so was a little surreal having the sights and smells of a full on Christmas feast.
Working with the talented Katie Giovanni a storm in the kitchen, her biggest hit was the roost potatoes the crew were queueing up to finish off the extras!
#adventgram
I'll be posting this years adventgram images here over the next few weeks.
A merry Monocle christmas
It's that time of year again my 10th Monocle christmas guide. I love seeing what Josh at Monocle gets in for the gift guide and this year was a great one I wanted to take 90% of it home which is always a good sign!
This year was a sneak peek into the front room to see what Monocle santa had left for the big day.
Thunderbirds are GO!!!!
Great to see my Halifax Thunderbirds ads I shot for Adam & Eve DDB up on billboards all over the place. Was also great to become part of Thunderbirds history at the same time. My shoot was the last time the Thunderbirds were filmed and photographed in the original studio that Gerry Anderson set up all those years ago, sadly now the studio is being knocked down. Was great to get to see it and all the amazing sets and meet the famous puppets
One in a million sock puppets
At the beginning of the summer Tatler Magazine asked myself and Jessica Dance to collaborate to produce their luxury watch shoot for the October issue. They had the idea to create sock puppets to wear the watches, so Jess created the 8 characters to star in the story. It was a busy days shoot with a lot of watches to feature but with the watch and puppet wrangling skills of the Tatler team it all went smoothly. When we came to the end of the shoot we worked out that at one point we had around 8 million pounds worth of watches in the studio that's definitely a studio record!
images © David Sykes 2016 All rights reserved.
Hallo!
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!
images © David Sykes 2016 All rights reserved.
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
A few months ago I got to work with my old friends at Adam & Eve DDB Tom and Nick shooting some new press work for president cheese.We had a great day shooing lots of yummy cheese dishes with lots of leftover cheese at the end so no one left hungry!
images © David Sykes 2015 All rights reserved.
Pallets full of ideas from Monocle
One of my favourite Monocle shoots of the year is the annual Christmas Gift guide, we always have lots of fun sorting through and shooting all the great products the team find for the gift guide.This year there were quite literally pallet loads to work with. There are some great products in the guide the one I was most tempted by was the new star wars toy the Sphero BB-8 great fun to play around with in a big studio (I'm a bit of a sucker for all things tec and Star Wars!)
images © David Sykes 2015 All rights reserved.
Stylish Comfort Food
At the beginning of the year myself and Jessica Dance were asked to collaborate on a cover shot for the London sylist magazine. The theme was Comfort food so we shot Bangers and mash and some beans on toast. The shots looked great and the cover went down very well to the point where it went viral the following week!
images © David Sykes 2015 All rights reserved.
Delicious jewellery
Recently I teamed up with food stylist Olivia Bennett to help me finally shoot an idea that I've had knocking around for about 5 years now. It was a great shoot to work on, Olivia's designs for the Jewellery was fantastic creating recipes that you could wear on a glamorous night out.
I wanted to keep the set and lighting looking like a classic jewellery shoot to help give the view that double take.
images © David Sykes 2015 All rights reserved.
Sizzling success
Sorry it's been so long since my last blog post it's been a rather busy 3 months. At the end of the summer my second cover for Monocle magazine was on sale and again it featured toys! This time is was sylvanian families. It was a fun days shoot getting the models to look there best!
images © David Sykes 2015 All rights reserved.
Weight of the world
Recently I found some scales that I remembered from being a kid at my local village shop and couldn't resist buying them for a test.The result is this series of texture studies, it is also the beginning of a new project that I'm working on. Watch this space to find out more.
images © David Sykes 2015 All rights reserved.
Flying Robot Cat
Earlier this Year monocle asked me to shoot the cover for the Japan special. It was a fun one to shoot it was a vinyl figure of Doraemon a flying robot cat from the future!It looked great on the news stands and was one of their best selling issues ever, so I was delighted and honoured to have been a part of it.
images © David Sykes 2015 All rights reserved.
Life is just a bowl of cherries
images © David Sykes 2015 All rights reserved.
This is a recent personal project i've been working on, I'm fond of a cherry or two so this was always going to be a fun shoot to do.
Cherries are such beautiful fruits, they look the same on mass but on closer inspection they all have a unique look of there own, this also applies when you squish them no two burst in the same way!
I didn't realize until I started to squish them how juicy they can be.
Hope you enjoy my juicy cherry pictures I'll be selling prints on my new revamped website which is coming soon......
Mad grand finale
images © David Sykes 2015 All rights reserved.
Sad that this week see's the final ever Mad Men, it's been an amazing series beautiful shot and well written. I look forward to seeing how it all ends with a large old fashion in my hand!
Here are a couple of my Man Men inspired test I've done over the years.
Cheer's