Hummingbird Bakery

I was hired to light four different scenes for a Hummingbird Bakery marketing campaign, designed to showcase their range of cakes and sweet treats. The goal was a natural, inviting aesthetic that highlighted the products without feeling overly staged or over-lit.

The shoot took place in mid-winter, when I feel the UK sun has a particularly sharp, crisp quality, distinct from the softer light found in other seasons.

Sometimes, one light can be enough. For the interior daylight scenes, I used an HMI placed outside, aimed through the patio windows but kept out of the camera frame. This allowed me to supplement and control the natural light while maintaining a clean, sunlit look.

I also used the existing blinds to modulate and shape the light inside. With the room already benefiting from natural daylight, positioning the HMI outside helped maintain consistent brightness throughout the shoot, ensuring the cakes, actors were exposed for while preserving an natural, authentic atmosphere.

Director of Photography - Interview with Peter MacDonald

I had the opportunity to serve as Director of Photography for an interview with legendary director and cinematographer Peter MacDonald, best known for films such as Hamburger Hill, The Bourne Ultimatum, and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, among many others. Peter shared fascinating stories from his decades in film, making it a true privilege to capture the conversation on camera.

For the interview setup, I embraced the natural light of the location. A large window (to camera right), softened by net curtains, provided beautifully diffused daylight, which I used as the key source to create a natural, organic aesthetic. To balance the changing intensity of the sun, I introduced a single additional light, bounced off the white wall to Peter’s right, ensuring consistent exposure throughout.

On the opposite side, the bookshelf (to camera left) added just enough negative fill to shape Peter’s face and create subtle contrast. The result was a simple yet cinematic setup that presented Peter authentically and kept the focus on his presence and storytelling.

L'Acoustics - The Island

I worked as Director of Photography with Mind the Film on the production for L’Acoustics’ (The Island), showcasing their new immersive sound system design. Over a two-day shoot, I created four distinct looks, ranging from daylight to night-time, with lighting designs tailored to both close-up technical shots and larger compositions incorporating people, for example, a night-time party scene within The Island.

Daylight scenes benefited from a good amount of natural light, which I supplemented with fluorescents to highlight specific parts of the composition. For close-up work, I used LED Dedo's for precise control, and 8x4 Polyboards and flags to shape fill and negative fill as needed. For night-time scenes, I leveraged practical lights to maintain a natural aesthetic while enhancing the environment with up lighters in specific colours to support the mood and authenticity of the space.

In one intimate scene with a couple watching TV, I needed the room to feel dark while still exposing the actors’ faces. To achieve this, I programmed a large white blank page on the screen the actors were using, providing subtle illumination that looked natural while ensuring the faces were visible on camera.

Last Night - Music Video

Currently In Production

The first in a series of synesthetic videos created for cinematic soundscape tracks I have produced. Last Night seeks to capture the atmosphere of the city after dark, rain soaked streets, flickering lights, shifting shadows, and subversive behaviours. 

The piece draws inspiration from the aesthetic of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner and the iconic sound world of Vangelis, blending image and sound to evoke a moody, immersive nocturnal landscape.

Director of Photography - Interview with Brad Fidel

I had the opportunity to serve as Director of Photography for an interview with legendary American composer Brad Fiedel, best known for creating the iconic scores for The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day, among others. Brad shared fascinating insights into the making of the Terminator soundtrack, reflecting on his creative process and his experimentation with emerging synthesiser technology at the time.

For the interview setup, I embraced the natural light of the location. A window just out of frame to camera left provided a soft back light, naturally motivated by Brad’s position in relation to it. I complemented this with a key light placed at a slightly acute angle, ensuring it

didn’t wrap too far around his face. This added shape and allowed for natural negative fill, while the white walls of the room provided a subtle bounce that helped balance the contrast ratio.

Tamana Ayazi and Kat Craig for TED Talks

Working with Mind the Film on this project for TED Talks. An interview with Afghan filmmaker Tamana Ayazi, conducted by Kat Craig, in which Ayazi discussed her Netflix documentary In Her Hands.

The room posed significant challenges: with shuttered windows blocking all natural daylight and a very limited amount of space. To establish a consistent base exposure, I used a 2K on a dimmer gelled with full CTB bounced into the ceiling. Ayazi and Craig were then cross-lit with fluorescents, each serving as a back light for one subject while acting as a key for the other. 

All fixtures were diffused with bleached muslin to soften the light and create a natural, balanced look within the constraints of the environment.

Control - (Short Film)

In Production

A short film exploring the psychology of relational dynamics, control, and narcissism. The film examines how power, manipulation, and emotional dependency manifest within personal relationships, to reflect the subtle tensions and imbalances between individuals.

TED Women, Katie Paterson: The mind-bending art of deep time

I was invited to work as Director of Photography with Mind the Film on a TED Talks series profiling artists. In this instance, the interview was with conceptual artist Katie Paterson, whose practice explores themes of deep time. 

The decision was made to shoot outdoors, using the Scottish landscape of hills and water as a natural backdrop. The location offered both opportunities and challenges. Scotland’s weather is famously unpredictable, often shifting through all four seasons in a single day,

so maintaining a coherent and controlled look required a flexible lighting approach.

I embraced the clarity of Scottish daylight, using a large Sunbounce above Katie to soften and diffuse the natural light on her face. To maintain consistent exposure as the light changed, I supplemented with a pair of fluorescents as fill. A slightly flatter lighting style was chosen to ensure Paterson stood out clearly against the dramatic landscape, balancing the immediacy and texture of natural light with the control required for a polished, professional interview aesthetic.

BTS

Director of Photography - Interview with Catherine Wilkholm

I had the opportunity to serve as Director of Photography for an interview with Catherine Wilkholm, a chartered clinical psychologist. It was fascinating to hear her discuss her psychological practice, particularly how she helps individuals with a range of issues, such as PTSD, phobias, and sleep disorders.

For lighting, I relied on the natural light streaming in from a large window behind the camera, using the blinds to control its intensity. 

To maintain consistent key light, I supplemented this with a fluorescent light from the same angle, diffusing both with half-diffusion paper. Though I don’t often use tungsten lights these days, I chose to incorporate an 850W tungsten as the backlight. There's something raw and unique about the quality of tungsten light that I find particularly appealing.

To match the daylight temperature of the key, I gelled the 850W with CTB. To soften the scene further, I bounced a 2k on a dimmer, gelled with full CTB, into the white ceiling, creating a soft fill light that helped even out the overall exposure. Positioning Catherine within the spacious room allowed me to take advantage of the background, creating a shallow depth of field that added dimensionality to the shot, the backlight, while not visible in the frame, was motivated. Even though we can’t see the window, from a compositional standpoint, it felt natural to have a light source there, subtly enhancing the scene.

Investigations into Cinema, Memory, Narrative and Psychology

Written Series

A four part exploration of the intersections between cinema, memory, narrative, and psychology.

The series engages with the work of Michael Haneke, David Lynch, and Christopher Nolan’s Memento to examine how film reflects, distorts, and manipulates memory, and how these processes mirror the workings of the human mind.

Each part focuses on a different dimension:

The fragmentation of memory and identity (Memento).

The blurring of dream and reality (David Lynch).

The use of detachment and perspective in shaping narrative (Michael Haneke).

How these cinematic techniques reveal deeper truths about psychology, perception, and the human condition.

The series aims to bridge film theory and lived experience, suggesting that the language of cinema not only entertains but also illuminates the way we construct and remember our own stories.

Substack - PT 1

Substack - PT 2

Substack - PT 3

Substack - PT 4

Night Law

In Production

This series of photographs will explore the shifting life of the city as it moves from day into night. In daylight, the streets reveal their order and function, but under artificial light a different rhythm takes hold. Shadows deepen, details sharpen, and the city opens itself to other lives, those lived at its edges, in overlooked or in-between spaces.

Drawing inspiration from Edward Hopper’s quiet intensity and Gregory Crewdson’s staged yet enigmatic scenes, the images suggest fragments of narrative suspended in time.  Light itself becomes the storyteller: falling across an empty doorway, isolating a lone figure on the street, or illuminating an object that hints at unseen events.

Each photograph carries the weight of something that has just happened, or is about to, inviting the viewer to complete the story through their own imagination.  By shifting between the everyday and the uncanny, the documentary and the theatrical, the work asks how urban space transforms after dark, and how light can shape not only what we see, but also what we believe has taken place.

National Gallery: [Re]curated: Lucian Freud – The Artist’s Eye 

I was brought onto the National Gallery project [Re]curated, to light a series of interviews and B-roll with Daniel Hermann (Ardalan Curator of Modern & Contemporary Projects at the National Gallery, London) and researcher Isaac Nugent.

The location presented unique challenges: the room was surrounded by windows, which provided a useful source of natural daylight but also complicated placement of lights, stands, and cameras to avoid reflections. Although direct sunlight never entered the space, reflected sunlight from nearby buildings occasionally produced harsh streaks across the image.

This required carefully positioning both the lights and the interview composition in response to shifting conditions. To maintain consistent exposure, I used a 2K on a dimmer gelled with full CTB into the ceiling to lift and stabilise the overall room level. I adjusted the existing blinds as needed and employed three Divas diffused with bleached muslin as key and back lights, with the back light motivated by visible windows in the composition. A flag was used to create negative fill and introduce shape on the opposite side of the key. These choices balanced natural and artificial sources, ensuring a consistent look throughout the interviews.

Teeth - Still Life -  (Short Film)

In Production

A new series of short films exploring and reinterpreting the boundaries of the traditional concept of still life.

The project investigates how objects, light, and composition can be transformed through motion, framing, and sound design, challenging the perception of stillness and inviting viewers to experience ordinary elements in extraordinary ways.

The series draws inspiration from classical still life painting, contemporary experimental cinema, and the tactile, sensory qualities of the physical world, aiming to blur the line between observation and immersion.

Director of Photography - Interview with Ian Nathan

I was invited to be Director of Photography in an interview with Ian Nathan, the author and filmmaker, where he discussed his upcoming documentary on John Carpenter's The Thing. I’ve heard Ian speak on many film documentaries over the years, but to hear him talk with such detailed insight and animated passion about The Thing was a real pleasure. Within days, I found myself re-watching the classic film.

The space we were working in was very small, so I opted to use Ian’s books as a pop of colour in the background, subtly connecting him with his writing. For lighting, I relied on natural daylight from a window behind the camera, modified with a diffuser and slight adjustments to the blinds. This served as my key light, complemented by an LED to maintain consistent exposure.

Given the subject matter, I felt a darker, moodier image would be appropriate. I added a hard backlight at an acute angle, reminiscent of 1980s horror films, creating a negative fill that shaped Ian’s face and added depth. The overall approach was designed to evoke the tension and atmosphere of Carpenter’s work while keeping Ian visually connected to his craft.