I’ve been shooting and providing photos for Air Mexico for a few years now. The company that produces the magazines is part of the TIME group in Mexico. The thing I most love about the team there is that they allow me an incredible amount of freedom and control.
Sometimes I get assignments to shoot new material, which has seen me shooting pics at sushi restaurants, Tsukiji fishmarket, hotels, a cocktail bar, various shops and around the streets of Tokyo.
Then sometimes I get a feature come my way which is about fitting pictures from my back-catalogue into and around copy that the magazine has had written. I’ve illustrated a short-story by a leading Mexican writer that way and most recently have provided pics for a showcase issue of the magazine, focused around the colour ‘red’.
The ‘Red’ assignment was a mix of both off the peg and newly-shot stuff. For the opening double-page spread, the shot of Tokyo Tower was a new one. I spent a few hours at the Tower with a Hasselblad CFV-50c digital back on an old Hasselblad 500C/M film body. Lens was the old V series 120mm f/5.6. Sharp as a razor, that lens. In the end, the magazine chose a wide shot, which was made with my trusty old Nikon D700, which I’d just fancied taking out for the day [having long-since retired it from front-line duty].
The rest of the pics are a mix of ‘sort of recent’ and ‘actually quite old’. The one that has most emotional connection for me is the shot of all the ‘omikuji’ [paper ‘wishes’ or good luck charms] tied onto rails at a shrine in Kanagawa. The day I shot that was about a week after the Great East Japan Earthquake, in March 2011. Myself, my family and my best-friend from the UK – Sam – were staying a couple of days with friends outside Yokohama. Every photo that got shot in the first days and weeks after the quake is imbued with a special resonance for me.
You can see a few more features I’ve shot for Air Mexico, Accent and Aire magazines and for the Travel+Leisure/Mexico magazine that is also published by them, here at my portfolio website.
