New kit that actually works.

Unfortunately most of the gear, gadgets and new technology I try out these days is usually disappointing in some way but just lately I've been fortunate and feel I have bought into some really good stuff, for once. 

Here are my fave bits of kit at the moment:

Hasselblad H4D-50 - My new baby. 50 megapixels with fast and accurate true focus and solid Firewire 800 tethering. Unlimited bursts continuous shooting to card coupled with massive amounts of detail is fantastic. Lens corrections in Phocus software rock.

Macbook Pro 17 - Fast enough for location work. Great hi res antiglare screen, well made and looks beautiful.

Crucial SSD drive - Expensive but worth it for some, super quick, quiet and durable. The Macbook Pro flies with this installed.

Gitzo Systematic Tripod - Simply fantastic solid support for the Hasselblad. The best all round tripod I've used yet.

Really Right Stuff Ball Head - So sweet to use, solid as a rock and feels wonderfully precise and smooth. Made in the USA and built to last.

Canon 5D mkII - A great all round DSLR, good high ISO usability, HD video @24fps. Great add ons available for video etc and the compatible lens lineup is now massive.

Lightroom 3 Beta 2 - Awesome free software I now cannot do without - can't wait for when the full version comes out. A powerful tool and essential.

Photoshop CS5 - I only installed it yesterday but I'm already impressed with the upgrade. Great new tools and features plus 64 bit architecture. Bridge CS5 is so useful too.

HRT Music Streamer Plus - A bargain for hi fi nuts, USB Dac sounds seriously good, USB powered, version 2 out now, made in the USA.

Spotify Premium - Now upgraded to work with iTunes, great sound quality, shared playlists, simple sweet software that becomes part of your life. The Spotify iPhone app rocks too. Alas not available in the US - but you guys have Pandora.

iPhone  - Of course! I only have the 3G but wait patiently for the new iPhone and OS 4 this Summer... lets hope the phone part works better this time.

IO-Play - Bluetooth hands free car kit that works really well with iphone. Good sound quality, easy to use, essential. Having Spotify working in the car is the nuts!

Keep it under your hat

A couple of portraits from a shoot on location in New York. Sorry to be so vague but I'm afraid I may have said too much already... sssshhhhh!

Black Hills, South Dakota

Summit Road

Roadside Trees

Silver Birch

After months of what seemed like a weird form of semi-hibernation, tucked away in a dark North London retouching dungeon, I finally escaped.

Here are a few images from a recent trip to the beautiful Black Hills of South Dakota - if only to serve as evidence to prove that on occasion, I do actually leave the house. 

APA Awards

It's always good to win something but sometimes it's great to help someone else win... This time Redwood's Land Rover OneLife Magazine won Best Use of Photography in the APA International Customer Publishing Awards for the Mongolian story we shot last year.

See what the judges said about it in the APA Winners' online brochure - page 23.

RAF shoot for FHM

The elite fighting force that is the RAF Regiment (aka The Rocks) are to the Royal Air Force what the Marines are to the British Navy. These guys are extremely tough - and to make the rank of Flying Officer doesn't just take brawn, it takes brains too.

As part of a new drive to help recruit the rare few with the right stuff to become RAF Regiment Officers, FHM Magazine launched a National open contest of absolute mental and physical toughness to see who has what it takes to make it through what they call "The Rock Hard Challenge".

For the FHM spread I photographed Flying Officer Anthony Bird, who will be the man to beat in the contest which takes place in January 2010. Shot on location at RAF Honington, Suffolk. Post production by yours truly. December Issue out now.

To see the animated spread, learn more about the challenge and maybe have a go (if you think you're hard enough!) check out www.fhm.com/RAF

Creative Review Photography Annual

This year's Creative Review Photography Annual / October Issue features three entries from yours truly... and as a bonus, my portrait of the brilliant Jake Tassell aka "the Banker" from my series After the Riots, made one of the six chosen limited edition covers ... nice.

IPA Photography Awards 2009

I just wanted to say a little about the IPA 2009. It was the fist time I have entered this US photo contest so I wasn't sure what to make of it but even though I didn't win I did make it through to the final rounds of judging on 12 entries.

The good thing is they gave all the runners up an "Honorable Mention" on the IPA site. After going through the extensive lists of entries I personally think there are images there that didn't make the top three that outshine many of the winning entries... but that's my two penneth so make yourself a cuppa, sit back and check out all the work that made the IPA 2009 Honorable Mention Gallery and see what you think.

Sarment Shoot, Burgundy

This Summer I was lucky enough to land a wonderful job shooting portraits and landscapes in the beautiful Burgundy region of France for the website and brochure of a new business venture called Sarment, which is a French word describing the first growth of the vine. We worked with some fantastic people including the pick of the world's best Sommeliers and after they twisted my arm I took their advice and brought home some of the best wine I've ever encountered.

A huge thanks to Trefor Thomas at Brand Advocate, everyone at Sarment and not forgetting the genius winemaker Olivier Leriche at L'Arlot for helping to make the shoot possible and teaching me so much about good wine.

My wine tip of the month: Domaine de L'Arlot - Nuits de Saint Georges 2001.

After the Riots

A personal series of portraits depicting six different characters after the protest in the City went wrong...

A big shout goes out to the talented actors involved and everyone who helped me on this including the amazing Sue Odell who worked her magic with casting and styling, and hair and makeup expertly handled by Amanda Green. Not forgetting a big thanks to Jesse Stagg, Andrew Howe and all the team at Street Studios for all their support.

Check out the rest of the series at morgansilk.co.uk and look out for the Banker - he's the one with egg on his face :)

Network Rail Campaign

The Network Rail Campaign I shot in April is now live!

The print and posters are all over the UK at the moment and some locations like Euston Station have used state of the art digital posters.

The idea is to inform the British public (deprived for years of a fully operational rail service) of the massive job Network Rail have done improving the West Coast Main Line from Euston to Glasgow. We ended up shooting the viaduct up in Cumbria, the night shot in Camden and if that wasn't glamorous enough we then shot the platform at Rugby Station. Once again it was a pleasure to work with the fantastic Angus and Nick at Locate Productions and also ace Art Director Toby Burnett for Iris London.

To check out the three poster campaign in more detail go to the New Work section on my site.

Philippines Shoot Update

Marcos Batton, Ifugao Priest of Banaue, the last of the five who conducted the famous Carabao sacrifice in the very real ritual filmed for Coppola's classic Apocalypse Now.

Banaue's legendary 3-time-champion fighting cockerel takes refuge under his umbrella while staring out unsuspecting English photographers.

I finally managed to add the images from the recent OneLife shoot to the New Work section on my site, as well as a whole new Philippines gallery containing a further 30+ shots from the trip. From Jeepneys to Surf Dudes, Fighting Cocks to Grandpa's old bones... the trip to Philippines was definitely an eye opener.

OneLife Magazine - The Film Issue

In January this year I managed to bag another fantastic assignment, shooting in the Philippines for Land Rover's OneLife Magazine which goes out to Land Rover owners worldwide.

This time we went to revisit the locations used in perhaps THE most iconic film of the 20th Century, Apocalypse Now.

The trip was awesome. We met some incredible people there, some of which were involved in the production of the movie and also we discovered the changes the movie made to the lives of the locals in Luzon, the largest island of the Philippines.

So another big thank you to Christa Larwood and Dan Delaney from Redwood Publishing plus a long overdue nod of gratitude to my friend and digi tech Andrew Howe for his brilliance and legendary powers of ingenuity.

OneLife - The Film Issue is out now and I'll be posting more images from the trip onto my new site very soon.

New Work

I've just added a New Work section to my site... check it out here!

New Website and ReBrand

My new website is now officially up and running with over 180 massive images and a smooth scaleable and minimal interface. I'm really, really pleased with it so a big thank you goes out to Stephen Birchmore for doing a great job of making it all work and to Simon Lunt for his valuable help in creating the fresh new Morgan Silk branding to go with the site. I think it's all looking great .... Cheers lads!

South Africa - Volvo LIV Magazine

Oscar Pistorius, triple gold medallist relaxes at home with Enzo.

The Play Soccer charity helps kids in the Townships to train for a better life.

I love South Africa... it's an amazing place. So when I was asked to go there to shoot for Volvo LIV Magazine I jumped at it. We covered the drive from Joburg to Durban with the Volvo S40 T5 Sport, meeting loads of wonderful sports-mad people along the way. Here are a couple of images from the 1.09 issue...

AOP Awards 2009

Looks like it's that time of year again. It feels like the AOP Photographers Awards comes round quicker each year... but that's probably something to do with my age and the ever increasing number of hours spent in front of a computer.

Well I managed to squeeze another series into this year's Awards... this time in the Commissioned Life Category. The Mongolian Army going at it full bore is truly a spectacle I won't forget in a hurry either... so I'm chuffed to get these in. Watch this space and fingers crossed for the big night on April 7th.

For sneak peek at the shortlisted entries visit the new AOP Awards site here

And may the best shots win!

ppaper

My work was recently featured in the gallery section of PPAPER Magazine.

PPAPER is a bi-weekly art publication from Taiwan and looks pretty interesting.

Unfortunately I'm unable to read Taiwanese and so can't shed any light on what the article says... but for those who can, I hope it's a good read!

Harley Davidson gets noticed!

I only recently discovered that the Harley Davidson Campaign I shot in Minneapolis for Carmichael Lynch managed to bag a few accolades in the US.... Graphis Advertising Annual and Communication Arts Annual both featured the series which also won a Silver in Minnesota’s Advertising Federation’s Annual Show. Shot in Minneapolis and retouched by yours truly with a big helping hand from Saddington & Baynes to transform the copy into realistic chrome parts in CGI. So I think it's customary to give big shout out to Art Buyer Andrea Mariash , Art Director Bill Lee and a huge thanks to Sally Mars for being so fantastic and who's production skills really know no bounds... Cheers and well done everyone!

Keeping it Real...

Well I thought I'd kick off this blog malarkey with one of my favourite images from the amazing trip to Mongolia last August while on assignment for Onelife Magazine.

On the last day of the journey we stopped off around 50km north of Ulaan Baatar to shoot the newly erected gargantuan as part of the story. The stainless steel statue of the greatly revered Chinggis Khaan is at least 40m tall and is so magnificent that on more than one occasion this image has been mistaken for a fake.

Well there's no CGI trickery with this one... just a straight shot of a bloody great statue in the middle of nowhere. Sweet.