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I’m very pleased to see a three projects I’ve shot this year in the 2012 AJ Small Projects Award. All of the submitted projects are now online at the AJ Buildings Library which is well worth checking out. There’s some great little schemes in there up to a maximum value of 250k. So the three projects are as follows:

Jewel Box, Fraher Architects

Playground – Charlotte Sharman Primary School, De Matos Ryan

one and eight, me & sam

Nice to see a few images I shot for the guys at me & sam the other day appear on their site. It’s a rather nice little exhibition in the foyer of a lager firm of Architects in Covent Garden for the Stephen Lawrence trust. Worth popping in to have a look if you’re in the area.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of visiting MDM Models Ltd down the road from me in Camberwell. There was lots and lots worth taking shots of but unfortunately lots was confidential.

However in one of the studios there were these series of wire metal sections being welded up for a project in Blackpool. Fascinating to watch these guys and have a chat with some of them too. Nice to have a workshop rather than a studio or office this time. Looking out for the next set of images for the project. Got one that would look good here? Get in touch!

Trying to get back into the project and shoot more for the creative spaces project. I was down on the Southcoast yesterday so managed to stay over and see a friend from University who has recently set up on his own.

Definitely worth a visit to his site – stromarchitects.com

A quick update with few images from a recent shoot I did for a talented structural engineer friend of mine. The work is entitled Tornado (The Bell), 2010 by Fiona Banner and is held in a private collection in London. I was fortunate enough to see the work a few weeks ago. The scale of it is quite incredible and makes an impressive addition to the building it’s situated in.

Tornado ZE728 in flight photo by © Philip Stevens

There’s some more information about the piece along with some great shots of the process of making the work at the Locus + site.The bell was cast, in Loughborough, by the world renowned John Taylors Bell Foundry.

A few shots from a wander round town yesterday on a very overcast day. I grabbed these at the Royal Academy courtyard of the 1/40th replica of Tatlin’s Tower. Impressive as a piece of sculpture, but even more so when you think about how enormous it would have been if built at full scale! All hand held but hoping to go back with a tripod and shoot it properly soon – with permission.

Read a bit more about Tatlin’s Tower or The Momument to the Third International over at Wikipedia. It’s almost religiously studied at Architecture schools.

I’m very pleased to note that John Pardey is now one of my clients. This is even more special for me as John was my final year tutor for my Degree at Portsmouth along with Sir Colin Stansfield-Smith. Both helped me achieve far more than I ever expected so it’s nice to re-connect again with John.

We shot the project a few weeks ago and they’ve just started uploading the shots to their website and Flickr account. Here’s a brief description of the scheme from JPA.

Oaklands College is a Grade II listed post-war former educational campus in the centre of St. Albans. After the college moved to new premises the site was bought by Fairview New Homes for redevelopment into housing.

New apartment blocks were planned in a campus arrangement across the site that contained over two hundred mature trees, as if a parkland. A design language was derived from a central group of retained and listed buildings. Adopting the rectilinear building shape and by adding layers in an additive approach, we arrived with a building design that responded to it’s setting within the listed campus.

The layout is incredibly generous and has the feel of a large park to it. The existing buildings are incredible modernist masterpieces and I felt very privileged to be shooting them. They’ve done a great job on the refurbishment and also the new blocks. It was also a beautiful autumn day which made the job even more enjoyable.

A few shots from a recent shoot in Guildford for Austin-Smith:Lord at their recently completed Guildford Civic project. These were shot during the Gala opening day which involved working carefully around the various people trying to set up for the evening performance. We still managed to come away with the shots needed though.

After umming and ahhing about whether to enter or not this year I got a rather nice email this morning noting that the below image has been selected as a finalist and inviting me to the private view. Just off to prepare an A2 version for printing. Can’t wait and especially pleased as it’s the first photo competition I’ve entered.

Fingers crossed!

Very pleased to see a project I shot last week make an appearance on the Dezeen website today. A great little project and also a my first job for a new client – Feix & Merlin.