Mountain Warehouse came up to Shropshire this month to shoot their Autumn clothing range, with the emphasis on rambling and fun in the English countryside. Most of May and June had been really quite hot and dry, so the grass around Shropshire was pretty brown, but as if by magic the rain turned up just in time for the shoot. So we managed to get a good mix of weather conditions which gave the images a really nice atmosphere and a slight autumnal feel.

With all the fabulous fishing going on I decided to have a look through my archive of fishing pictures and pull out a few memories from previous years and post em up. Some are on slide film some are digital pictures. I do love looking back every now and then, pulling out sheets and sheets of slides, it’s just like reading a diary…only better. Makes me smile!

There’s many a time when I’m sitting on a chair lift in a blizzard, collar up, hat down, cold biting at me, that I drift off and dream of warm spring days by the river listening to bird song and the slurp of wild brown trout gobbling up Mayflies. So once the winter season is over and the gear is stowed away, one of the first things I reach for is the fly rod, and this year I splashed out and brought a new one, a Fladen 7 footer, which is a wonderful rod for the money. I also ordered my roving vouchers from the Wye and Usk Foundation and called my mate and mentor in all things fishy, Graham Priest.

We go back a fair way Graham and I, we’ve both worked on various angling TV productions in the past, such as saltwater fly fishing in Cuba with Matt Hayes. Graham has worked and presented a little on Wet Nets with Matt too, while I’ve shot features for Improve Your Coarse Fishing and Angling Times in the past.

So with vouchers in hand we ventured into Herefordshire to fish the River Arrow. A beautiful little river that rises in Powys in Wales, and meanders it’s way down to meet the with the River Lugg south of Leominster, Spring was in full swing, the whole river bank was lush with colour and the insect life was something to be seen. Walking through the dock leaves, squadrons of Damselflies lifted off and flitted around us, we watched them as they captured Mayflies on the air. It’s amazing to see such an abundance of life after such a cold winter, so I decided to shoot a fair bit of it and make it the theme for the day.

I was trying to travel light with my cameras so I just packed the D300s, I didn’t take my macro lens as the macro on my 24-70mm would do just fine. Unfortunately my new Nikon zoom lenses are too large for my Ewa Marine underwater housing, so I had to leave it at home, I think an investment in a small prime lens might be the answer for that little problem. I also had a play with Grahams Canon S90 compact, which I have to say produced some incredible results for such a tiny camera. See if you can spot them in the slideshow, they are slightly squarer than 35mm frame.

With so much insect life around we were sure that the fish would be biting so we walked to the end of the beat, I tied on one of Grahams magnificent hand made Mayflies, and slowly, we fished our way up stream. But the fish hadn’t read the script and were being rather tricky to catch! I suppose a big fish is a big fish for good reason, and that reason is, that he is crafty and not easily fooled. Every fish that rose seemed to be at the edge of the nastiest bramble bush, overhanging tree, or worst still, in it’s roots.

We fished the beat twice and I lost more than I caught, and that includes flies, I landed one but to be honest I was glad to just be there. Graham had better luck landing a couple of really nice wild brown trout, which had the most vivid red spots all over them. We released them back into the wild as there are more fishermen than fish these days.

The light was good all day and I managed to shoot quite a few pictures in and out of casts, but by 7pm we’d had enough, we packed up and went for a well deserved pint and a pork pie to finish a fantastic day in the English countryside. Next stop the Welsh hill country. If you wish to buy any of these pictures please Click Here

I have been so impressed with my new cameras I’ve decided to invest in the top of the range D3x. This will give me an amazing 24.5 million pixels and an 70mb file, that is Medium Format quality in a 35mm camera. I’d better go and get it out of the box…Watch this space!

Family in tow I arrived in Alpe d’Huez to shoot the Mountain Warehouse catalogue, the resort had had a huge season with a very deep snowpack which was still being topped up almost every night. We had some pretty good weather for the whole thing, just one afternoon of blizzards, which made a pleasant change. They wanted a mix of ski and snowboard shots with the emphasis on fun. So that’s what we did, went on the mountain and had a good time, it worked a treat. The Woodhall kids also did a fine job of modeling, and predictably where asking to get paid before they had finished the job. We stayed at the Hotel Chamois again and had great food upstairs, and a great time down stairs in the Underground bar. Many thanks to Gareth, Catharine and Adam for their huge support.

Straight off the back of Obergurgl I was in Chamonix to shoot some promotional images for Profeet. The brief was pretty elastic, some action, some emphasis on the boots, some lifestyle. So off we went up the hill for a couple of days to see what we could get. On the first day in Les Houches the weather was foggy and warm and we couldn’t shoot much, so on day two we went to Le Brevant, it was like the Bahamas it was so hot, the snow turned to crud by mid morning and they closed half the mountain by 2pm. So for the last day we went up Le Grand Montet where we managed to find some powder higher up and work the hell out of it, many thanks to Chris and Ben for all of the hiking!

Well it was back to Obergurgl again for the Snow + Rock 10/11 catalogue shoot, and the Austrian weather, incredibly, was even worse than the last 2 years. We had the whole spectrum of conditions over the 9 days from armpit deep slush to bullet proof ice, to knee deep powder. But I suppose it makes for a varied range of pictures. The Nikons just blew me away, it was the first time I’d used them in anger on fast moving subjects and they just nailed it every time, the colours and picture quality are simply amazing. I’ll only put a flavour of the images we shot on this post, the rest can be revealed in October after the launch.

Just had time to nip to North Wales for a quick shoot in between the office and my next job. I shot a few running shots and I wanted to test out the built in Nikon Wireless Flash system outside. I’m not too impressed, the range is pretty small and fairly hit and miss, it’s better on the D300s than the D3. The SB900′s are quite powerful though and I tried a few shots at slow shutter speeds using rear curtain sync.

Back home for a day from the warmth of St Tropez and it’s off to London to shoot in the city. I had to shoot a Front and Back cover for Cycle Surgery for their Summer 2010 catalogue. Luckily the sun was out for that “summer look” but it was sitting firmly at zero degrees. Unluckily I had brought raging tonsillitis back from France, so to combat this I donned two down jackets, I must have looked like the Michelin Man zipping in and out of the traffic shooting paparazzi style.

Trying not to get anyone else in the shot is tricky, as London is, as you can imagine, rammed with people. So for some of these shots, I waited, poised with my finger over the release button for that gap to open up in the crowds and I’d sneak off a shot. All this while the model froze in T shirt and shorts, and angry security guards demanded our shoot permits, only to look crushed when they where produced.

So with new camera’s in tow I touched down in Nice for a week of Interiors work with Consensio in some spectacular summer villas. I must admit, on arrival the weather was pretty grim, but by the end of the week the air was full of Mimosa blossom and it was a lovely 21 degrees, and the idea of returning to a freezing Britain wasn’t too appealing.

The Villas where dotted all around St Tropez and they where fairly mind blowing, the Nikkor 14-24mm zoom proved to be invaluable and produced some incredible results. I may well try out Nikons Tilt and Shift lens range on the next Interiors job.