A year of events photographed in 2010

Though the majority of my work is in private and corporate portraiture and architectural and interiors photography, I regularly cover events in both formal and informal ways using a Fuji Finepix S5 Pro and a Leica M8 and have put together a slide show of some of the events I did photograph last year.

These include the launch event for the Boiler House Event space at Battersea Power Station, Designer Breakfasts, At Abrahams, 

A gilding master class by Rodrigo Titian, a Triibes Seth Goldin meetup at the Royal Festival Hall, 

 The Music Publishers Association AGM, The Thinking Hotel 24 hour workshop,

The British Quality Foundation Awards and the Change Play workshop - variety is the spice of life.

 

and a wedding in Surrey,

Change Play Business @ the ICA Co-designed by Own-It and The Thinking Hotel ®

I was privileged to be part of The Change Play Business event, the turnaround game co-designed by Own-It and the Thinking Hotel ® and which took place on the evening of the 29th and all day on the 30th of November.

 About 40 people came together to work collaboratively in innovative ways, to re-thing their business, create new ones and simply recharge their minds and spirits.

 As usual I took along my Leica M8 with a variety of lenses from the Voigtlander F4 15mm to the Leica  f2.8 21mm and my fabulous £1.0 50mm Noctilux lens and took lots of pictures.

 From the opening drinks  with a welcome address by Sylvia Baumgart from Own-It and the LCC and Maria Ana Neves of The Thinking Hotel and Monika Hestad and Olga Casademunt, followed by a movement game, then a talk by the guys from The Future laboratory.

The following morning we re-invented common objects by playing Rethink led by its inventor Lili Larratea then a number of other exercises and I attended two talks one on transmedia by Jo Roach of Somethin' Else the other by Antony Mayfield of icrossing on Market dynamics which were both eye opening.

You can see more pictures on the slideshow of Change Play Business

The Thinking Hotel - Prototyping weekend @ The Loft in Soho

On Saturday, between 3.30 and 10.30pm and on Sunday between 10.30am  and midday, I popped in and out of the The Thinking Hotel prototyping weekend event at the Loft in Soho which started midday Saturday and went on with barely a break until midday Sunday.

Initiated by Maria Ana Botelho Neves and assisted by Monika  Hestad and a slew of other helpful people it was an enjoyable and uplifting experience.

 Over the period, maybe 50 or so people contributes in a variety of ways, using a mind boggling range of techniques, games and systems to develop the business plan and aims of this exciting new concept to provide spaces, techniques and methodologies for thinking and creativity.

At one point several left the space to seek inspiration locally and discovered the Soho Hotel, which is a fresh example of how some hotels are developing to cater for specific needs.

I took my trusty Leica M8 and you can see how I saw the event during the periods I was there in a slideshow.

There were a truly amazing bunch of people there, with a wide range of interests and skills all giving of their time and knowledge to create something new, which is to be shared with people all over the world in a variety of ways.

A visit to The London Water Tower on Shooters Hill regarding The Thinking Hotel

On Tuesday 22nd, I headed off East with Maria Ana Botelho Neves founder of The Thinking Hotel project and Sarah Farrugia to meet Catherine Shovlin, owner of The London Water Tower to see it for ourselves and decide whether it might suit a planned prototyping workshop for the Thinking Hotel.

It turns out to be an amazing vertical house created by an Australian couple with around £3 million of building works with wonderful ground floor reception areas and a "secret garden" ideal for chatting in groups, five bedrooms each on a different level and a super top floor bar with surrounding balcony 130ft up with breathtaking views of London in all directions.

As we walked around it, climbed up and down it, stopping for a chat on the top deck, then a coffee in the garden, I snapped away with my Leica M8 and 15mm F4 Voigtlander lens and you can see the results in this slideshow.

Due to its very vertical nature, the space is only suited to certain types of workshops and events, but is absolutely fabulous for a super get away from it all break with family or a group of friends.

Definitely a place to tell people about who are looking for a unique experience in London.

Thinking about the Thinking Hotel - Visually

I have been watching and partaking in the development of Maria Botelho Neves's ideas for the development of a Thinking Hotel on Linked in in a recent post she asked

Images for the website: I am looking for 6 fantastic images to be combined with this sentence:

WOULDN'T BE GREAT IF WE COULD HAVE THE BEST PLACE FOR THINKING IN THE WORLD, NEAR US, AND OPEN 24/7? 

I have put together a selection of nearly 100 photos from my files based on the idea  Thinking about the Thinking Hotel - Visually

I am not suggesting that the six images are there already, but they may help inspire others to contribute more on a similar theme, or to fill in the spaces between what I had to hand.