Knowing that in the past couple of months you’ve made trips to our courses in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, as well as at least one more trip to the middle east and one to the US, how much time do you spend traveling?
I spend about a third of my time away from home, although from April onwards that increases to about half my time traveling. As I said, I like drama in images and you’re not going to get drama in the summer months in Dubai – it’s too humid. The best time of year for drama there is November through January, so I tend to bunch all my middle eastern trips to that time of the year.
You’ve been doing this for well over ten years now – what changes have you seen in that time?
Well, there’s a lot more people taking photos of courses now. Anyone can take a photograph. Some can even take good photographs but, to be honest, not many can take images that are going to work commercially. That’s where my background and post-production skills come in. I’ve got some special tricks that I use to maximise the visual impact of a shot, but I’ll keep those to myself if that’s ok!
You seem to spend a lot of time up ladders, or ten metres in the air in a cherry picker – if you want aerial shots, why not just use a drone?
First off, I’ve just not spent enough time handling drones to trust myself to dangle £10,000 worth of camera equipment from one and send it into the air. But the main reason is that