The Cannes Cannes, political camouflage and the closest I will ever be to being a Royal Academician

I say a lot on this blog about how much I love my job but sometimes even for me it is just a job. Every job is a challenge and a pleasure but some of it has to be bread and butter, at times like these this blog falls silent. Then along comes a week where all your favorite clients throw great jobs at you. 

It started, like so many good things do with a whisky. Dalmore had brought together an elite group of bartenders try out a new spirit (not even named yet)  at Donovan's bar in the Browns Hotel. It is beautiful bar full of the work of photographer Terrance Donovan and a stained glass window behind the bar that is great for bottle shots. Old friends and wee dram of something new.

Next stop was The Cannes Film Festival where me and a large photography and video team from TNR were there to shoot Kendall Jenner. A 14 person strong team, London to Cannes, 3 days, 10 hours sleep and hugging a poor woman I had only met that morning all for Miss Jenner looking pretty with a Magnum. All joking aside it was crazy shoot with so much to do but you cant really argue with photographing a pretty (and polite) 21 year old on a sunny french beach with a great team of friends and unlimited free ice cream. Added to that I was in charge of all social media photography, both shooting and editing, meaning my images were being seen by hundreds of thousands people worldwide, a new challenge but a great one.

Leaving Cannes at 6 am having got to bed at 3am (all work honest!) I headed back to London for a shoot at the Royal Academy of Arts. For the past week they have been wrapping the scaffolding at the back of the RA with an artwork by Yinka Shonibare MBE to celebrate their 250th anniversary. It is an artwork on a grand scale, with archive photography from their whole history, which just so happens to include one of mine and a beautiful African print across the top. Now throughout this 250 year history, artists have been fighting for the honor of getting their work in the RA, I have decided on the RA is good enough for me.

So here we are one week later and I am up at 3am again! I am with the Royal British Legion painting veteran Darren Fuller to blend in with the Houses of Parliament to protest the "invisibility" of veterans on the census. As if standing a man in one place for 5 hours to be intricately painted was not tough enough the whole place had been closed off for the state opening of Parliament on Wednesday, so that the only people inside were us and the bomb squad! Not a great time to be a bearded man with a big black camera bag and crazed over tired look in your eye.

So if ever you feel like you wish you had my job just remember that when you are in bed, I am probably not. Sometimes it is dull, sometimes it is cold, sometimes you want to throw your camera at people, I just don't tell you about them. Most of time though I would not do anything else far outweighing the times when I am just not capable of doing anything else.