Blog
Another Asthma UK shoot. This is specialist respiratory nurse and all round nice lady, Suzie Regan, who works at the Brompton Hospital in London.
"Patients living with severe asthma often feel that their voice within the wider community, or within general healthcare practice, is not being heard. It is the job of the specialist respiratory nurse to ensure a platform is provided for their fears and concerns to be expressed."
Two Pictures from a series of portraits of people I've just shot, who suffer from severe forms of Asthma. Pip, 11 from Gwent on the left and Kerry-Anne from Middlesborough on the right. Kerry-Anne says:
"It feels like somebody sticking a pin in my chest and then it’s a hundred pins. Straight away my airways close and I can’t breathe, it’s not a gradual thing but sudden. I try not to panic and dial 999"
A diabetes awareness course for care-workers in Croydon isn't the most glamourous assignment I've ever been given. I was happy with this shot though.
Just finished a great little assignment for an american magazine. The 4 best pastry chefs in London and Paris with desserts they'd come up with especially for the feature.
I've just photographed Ulli who looks after his disabled owner, Claire. He's a retriver-poodle, an incredible dog with an amazingly close relationship with Claire. He can find anything and bring it to her including her keys, the phone when it rings, the post, slippers etc but he also helps her to get dressed and empty the washing machine.
He's trained by an organisation called Canine Partners. http://www.caninepartners.org.uk/
Here's my son Billy at the exhibition. We just went up to London together for it's last day, to take some pictures and enjoy, for one last time, that fantastic feeling of being in a room full of my own pictures.
The latest on the actual pictures themselves, which are now the property of DiabetesUK, is that they will be on show again at their AGM and may even tour the country. There is also talk of a coffee table book with a dedicated website and of course any other ideas would be considered.
As for me, it's time to get back to my bread and butter non-diabetic photography. Again I'm looking for any ideas for future projects, diabetes-related or otherwise. So watch this space!
Some pictures from the launch party of my exhibition, "A Portrait Of Diabetes". A Fantastic evening! I'll never forget it.
I've finally got all 20 pictures printed, framed and hung on the gallery walls. I spent most of yesterday lurking around the exhibition space feeling proud and smug!
More info about the exhibition and where to find it here:
http://www.diabetes.org.uk/Get_involved/Diabetes-Week/Exhibition---A-Portrait-of-Diabetes/
This is me and Milo, a waiter from The Hotel Du Vin in Tunbridge Wells. We were posing for Times photographer Teri Pengilley trying to illustrate my story in tomorrow's Times. It was tricky to get the whole idea of living with diabetes, carbohydrate counting confusion and insulin injections while still trying to be informative and vaguely amusing. But we gave it our best shot or Teri did.
The full story story in The Times here:
:http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article7145586.ece
This is Jadie, age 10 who has had diabetes for just 3 months. We did the shoot in my local park, she's roller-skating with her dog, Tia. Recently diagnosed she is still getting used to her new life with diabetes. She says....
To begin with it wasn't so bad did my own bloods from the begining and then started injecting myself after about 3 weeks . had a bad week this month because my injections started to hurt and I don't want to be diabetic anymore but it has it’s plus sides, I can eat in class when my friends can't. Being diabetic hasn't stopped me doing anything, I go roller skating nearly every day and Tia can pull me along. I swim with my friends and love playing on my trampoline. I don't feel any different to my friends but they all know if have a hypo when I am with them, as long as have my packet of dextrose tablets with me I am fine’
This is 9 year old Hannah Lawton posing at the edge of her friend’s pool in Speldhurst, Kent. It was a shockingly hot day leading me to experience a hypo during the shoot. Luckily her mum, Helen was close at hand with a good supply of jelly beans.
Hannah says....
I enjoy swimming because it's great fun and energetic. It gives me a lot of exercise so I have to remember to take some extra sugar or jelly beans. I also enjoy dancing and do tap, jazz and freestyle every week. I think keeping active is very important to stay healthy and it's fun too!
This is south London born and bred, Mercury award-nominated rapper, Ty. He's had type 1 diabetes for 4 years, and as well as happily volunteering to be one of my diabetic portraits, he didn't bat an eyelid when I asked him to do a little performance on a high wall above Regents Canal near his Kings Cross rehearsal studio. Known for being provocative and deep as well as mellow and accessible, Ty is highly respected in British hip-hop and known as the rap don. Ty says....
Before I was diagnosed I was having a real slump .... highly uninterested, tired lazy and generallly a sore bear to deal with, then when it all came on top and it emerged that I was diabetic, I thought my life had ended. That's because I live to perform, I live to express myself, and through performance I have achieved a relative amount of respect for being ''energetic"
I thought it had all come to an end!! But it hasn't, I'm a type one diabetic. All I needed to do was readjust and learn to do a few things that seem like ordinary things now... .. take my injections ,read my blood sugars and watch what I eat!!! My world had not ended it just changed a little!!! I still have a ball on stage and will continue to do so!!
More about Ty here: http://www.tymusic.co.uk/
