Having spend some time on the roof of BT’s tower after a meeting a short while ago, I think I now know what my next personal project has to be and how I need to go about it. What I most certainly don’t have are the funds to start, let alone complete it right now - But I will, as it is now something I know that I really need to do. It also happens to have quite significant commercial value as well as documentary/cultural value - But that’s not the the driver behind it for me. I simply just have to do it.
London, as a city has never really captured my heart as it has done for many others that I know. I have always found the way that people operate on the ground very alien to the way in which I see and wish to interact with the world. I would almost go as far as to say that for me, London could almost be classed as a country, with its own values, identities, language and customs independent of the land mass within which it is located. That was my perception until I stood on the roof of BT’s Tower and placed the lens to my eye...
I could quite simply have sat up there all day. Hell, I could have sat up there all week, looking, absorbing, composing, shooting. I saw something very different in London in that 45 minutes I was up there and my view of the metropolis changed over a period of about 30 seconds. Which after a lifetime of bias against the city, is rather impressive.
One of the key drivers behind our commercial photography at Ginkgo, is ‘Point of View’. It pushes the direction of most of our work - What can we do that is sufficiently different to what has gone before us to create that image you don’t want to look away from and yet still conveys the message or feeling that is needed by the client paying for it.
For me the factor that has changed my feelings about London, is the point of view with which I have viewed it that day. Not behind glass in some air conditioned office at the top of some sky scraper, but out in the open air with the wind bringing a tear to my eye a long, long way up. And this is where my new project was born.
I want to create a portrait of the city form the air - A true interpretation of what the numerous boroughs are all about and a reflection of them from an outsiders point of view. And all from the air.
It is going to cost a small fortune, but I will do it - If you feel you’d like to help in some way, let me know. If I get this off the ground (yes, the pun was intended ;-) I’ll probably need all the help I can get.
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