Toodlepip

Obligatory nod to Feininger's famous photo
Leaving Republic last week was a bittersweet experience. As is inevitably the case after four years I leave much more than a company or a building. I’m leaving an awful lot of incredible friends and for me this is the hardest part.

At the same time I’m sufficiently reflexive enough to realise that all great agencies the world over are staffed by great people…it’s what makes them great in the first place…duh! So of course I’m itching to get to know and work with all my new w+k colleagues, but at the same time there are a few people from Republic I’d like to tuck in my pocket and take with.

In my week long vacation or hiatus depending upon your perspective I’ve delighted in all that London has to offer. I’ve eat out loads, I’ve seen tons of theatre of which Much Ado at the National probably qualifies as the best Shakespeare I’ve seen in years, I’ve been to every gallery and market I could think of, I visited Kew gardens for the first time – it looked exquisite as the first shiver of Spring blooms had appeared, I met up with all those London friends I never get round to seeing and I even found time to go on one of those Red Bus tours around central London…loved it.

This has also been a wonderfully creative week. I’ve finally got around to writing up loads of ideas that have been sloshing about my brain for the last few months. I’ve written a treatment for a short film I’ve been meaning to make and I’ve also now written a screen adaptation of a brilliant but little known fable by Aesop called ‘The Middle-aged Man and his Mistresses’.

My principal endeavour however has been photography. I finally coughed up the cash for a new digital SLR - something I’ve been wanting for ages. The other day a friend sagely told me over coffee having first been subjected to my agonised decision making processes whether I should buy the wretched thing or not that expensive purchases induce either “eternal regret or eternal delight” and that you never know quite which it’s going to be until after you’ve handed over the cash. So far I’m thrilled to find it’s the latter. My new Nikon D300 is preternaturally brilliant in fact getting good, neigh brilliant photos actually seems slightly too easy. I’ve always associated ‘proper photography’ with being genuinely difficult…it’s what made the strangely alchemic mixture of mechanics, chemistry and artistic inspiration somehow worthwhile. One really had to coax a great photograph out of my old SLR camera…it was always an unhappy marriage of knowledge, luck and my best guestimation of how to take into account the endless light, speed and temperature variables. But with my new camera I feel instantly like Cartier-Bresson reincarnate.


So far I’ve taken some nice sunrise photos around Tower Bridge, I’ve shot the debut performance of two friends’ ridiculous 80s band ‘To Gaze’ and the other day I helped out a local charity ‘The Mental Health Foundation’ by giving up an afternoon to cover/shoot their recent awareness publicity stunt on the Southbank. Tomorrow or rather this entire weekend I’ll be on set somewhere is Essex documenting my Director friend Vanessa’s new music video. I can’t wait. It should be a very varied shoot indoors and out and brings with it the pressure of not being allowed to f*ck it up!