HRH The Prince of Wales visited Louth Livestock Market last week and I was the event host photographer on behalf of The Prince’s Countryside Trust. Here is a slideshow of some of the photographs. If you met Prince Charles and would like to purchase a print please get in touch on the contact page.
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All photographs ©Michael Powell / michaelpowell.com
Calling all Lincoln City F.C. fans. Tickets are now on sale for a charity fund raiser featuring Lincoln City F.C. managers Danny Cowley and Nicky Cowley at Lincoln’s Engine shed on Monday 19th March. The official poster features my portrait of them taken for The Times at the height of last year’s FA Cup run. The session very nearly didn’t happen as Danny and Nicky were frantically trying to leave Sincil Bank for an appointment with BT Sport at West Ham Utd. My ‘studio’ was already set-up from photographing striker, Jack Muldoon naked for The Times My sporting body series so after a little cajoling on my part we all dashed up the stand to the VIP Lounge for some frantic editorial portrait photography. Thankfully the Cowleys gave me the time I needed before jumping into their car and driving straight down to London. Tickets cost £15.00 and can be purchased online here at Eventbrite.
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©Michael Powell / michaelpowell.com
Some Lincolnshire industrial photography for The Sunday Times here from the British Steel works at Scunthorpe. One of the pleasures of working for newspapers is the sheer diversity of places and people I encounter. A steelworks is of course a potentially very dangerous place to work so it’s not often that non-employees are allowed in. This was the third time I have taken pictures in a steelworks so knew some of the difficulties I’d encounter. Following a health and safety induction one has to change into protective clothing that includes a wool high-vis non-flammable overall, thick socks, protective boots, ear defenders, hard hat, gloves and glasses. Not the easiest of gear to wear when carrying camera equipment never mind actually take photographs. Sunday Times writer, John Collingridge and I were given a guided tour through the steel making process from the ore blending beds to the rod mill via the blast furnaces, basic oxygen steelmaking plant (BOS) and concast plant where ‘blooms’ or slabs are created by a casting machine. Steel from Scunthorpe is used for railway tracks around the world (including its own internal railway which is the longest in Britain), major construction projects such as the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, The Shard, Olympic Stadium and Crossrail in London right down to the smallest of safety pins. It was fascinating and the blast furnaces where iron ore is produced by blasting oxygen-enriched air can, for once, accurately be described as awesome (no pun intended). The noise, heat, sparks and river of ore gushing past was staggering and the whole process was of particular interest to me as my grandfather was himself a Scunthorpe steelworker many decades ago on a site demolished during the 1980s recession. Following Greybull’s acquisition from Tata for just £1 last year, the renamed British Steel plant at Scunthorpe has turned a profit, vital to the steel town’s employment and local economy, though I would have liked to see more Hondas and Suzukis in the staff car park given my family are the marques’ dealer and have traded in Scunthorpe since 1933.
All photographs ©copyright Michael Powell 2017 / michaelpowell.com
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British Steel, Scunthorpe. Robert Fox waiting to ‘dip’ in the Annie blast furnace.
British Steel, Scunthorpe. Robert Fox about to ‘dip’ in the Annie blast furnace.
British Steel, Scunthorpe. Blooms emerge in Caster 4.
British Steel, Scunthorpe. The blast furnaces are named after British queens, Vickie (Victoria), Annie (Anne), Bess (Elizabeth) and Mary.
British Steel, Scunthorpe. Inside the rod mill.
British Steel, Scunthorpe. Blooms emerge in Caster 4.
British Steel, Scunthorpe. The ore blending beds. Behind are the blast furnaces named after British queens, Vickie (Victoria), Annie (Anne), Bess (Elizabeth) and Mary.
British Steel, Scunthorpe. ‘Dipping’ taking place in the Victoria blast furnace.
British Steel, Scunthorpe. The control room that overooks the Rod Mill The whole procedure is also monitored by cameras including within the blast furnace itself.
A panoramic view of the British Steel site at Scunthorpe.
Nottingham commercial photography here from a recent commission for Second Element who are specialists in Legionella control and plumbing as well providing their self explanatory Drain Rescue service. Director, Richard Danielson took some ‘behind the scenes’ shots as we illustrated the team at work in various scenarios. The employee in the shot below even found himself company poster-boy (literally) when featured over Nottingham’s buses as part of their advertising campaign. Find more on Second Element here and more Michael Powell commercial photography here. Scroll down to see some environmental and editorial style portraits using some of the off-camera lighting techniques I sometimes employ when shooting for magazines and newspapers, such as this of Leicester City striker Shinji Okazaki for The Sunday Times.
Congratulations Di & Andy. Unusually, this was a day off from being the official photographer as I was a guest but I still took a camera along to this superb RAF Cranwell wedding in Lincolnshire followed by the reception at Charlotte House in Lincoln. Working with just one camera and one prime lens, a Canon 85mm f1.8 is an interesting discipline. If you call discipline taking a few pictures between drinks, chatting, eating and dancing. Most of these were shot ‘wide-open’ to keep the depth of field very shallow. Normally with quite heavy, overcast light like this I’d be filling-in the shadows with flash, particularly under hats but didn’t want to carry one so just continued with available light including Andy’s star turn with the band later in the evening.
