Varsity

by Vicky Matthers

Forget Oxford and Cambridge, there is only one rivalry that matters up here in Yorkshire and thats betweeen Leeds University and Leeds Beckett University...!!!

I got a call from the Leeds Beckett University sports department wanting some strong, dynamic pictures to represent the up coming varsity clash between the two Universities for all their various different sports.  We decided to concentrate on Rugby League and Cricket, two very different sports.

Luckily there were no shortage of volunteers from both sides to pose, as you can see from the results below I think they did a great job!  The venue was supplied by Leeds Rhinos Rugby League club, it's good to have friends in high places :)

We got just to the edge of the cricket field to finish off with a shot outside as the weather was improving by the minute:

Happy Birthday Icon!

By Matt Gore owner and founder iconphotomedia

There we were 10 years ago in The Tramshead pub just outside Saltaire (the Victorian model village near Bradford http://www.saltairevillage.info/), Guzelian photographers Matt Gore and Robin Hammond were hatching a plan to launch a photographer's agency that was to become iconphotomedia.

If memory serves me rightly (we were in the pub) some of the company names being banded around included:

Photo Republic
Untitled (we just got a kick out of visualising this in print as a byline)
M6 Pictures
Magenta 

Eventually, we agreed on iconphotomedia and have been lucky to be so well supported by a core of great clients for the last decade.

Our very first job - by Matt Gore for the Times Educational Supplement, who went on to become one of our biggest clients - was shot in Harrogate as Matt packed up his rental flat to move to London to start icon with Robin.

Picture by Matt Gore/iconphotomedia 

Graham Hoyle, chief executive of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP) published in the Times Educational Supplement

Even on the drive down to London, Matt stopped off in Leeds to shoot a commission for Leeds Metropolitan University..

Picture by Matt Gore/iconphotomedia
University students dress up WW2 style to entertain a local school visiting for a history lesson

Of course, we had no idea then that icon would go on to become such an outstanding success. In the early years we applied a very simple principle - to provide eye catching broadsheet style photography for a wide range of editorial and commercial clients. 

Here are some interesting numbers....

Heartfelt thanks to everyone who has helped icon survive and thrive over the past decade; our lovely clients and suppliers, a lot of which have become good friends, and also to our friends and family who have put up with the sometimes crazy lifestyle choice that is Professional Photography. 

Matt Gore

website new content

By Matt Gore/iconphotos


Here at icon towers we are currently locked away updating some new website content. In my experience website updates/designs always take twice as long as you anticipate and cost more than you budgeted so I write this with a slight feeling of dread. I never really know what the right balance is with return vs time and money it takes to get things right on a website. In the past I always had a theory, if you showed me a photographer with a flash (as in showy not code) website, I'll show you a photographer with no work.  Meaning busy successful photographers rarely have time for lunch let alone website design. Brian Harris is my case in point, we are talking one of the best photojournalists in the UK and a website that looks like it was done in a hour. Still is an awesome and successful photographer after many years in fleet street, my teenage years were spent thumbing through the Independent Newspaper where famously Brian was a staff photographer to see what he and John Voos had come up with the day before. click here for the Independent picture archive - (well worth a look round at some of there stuff)

On our website  www.iconphotomedia.com we have updated our 'advertising section' here is some of the work, lots more to add soon so please check back over the coming weeks.

Picture by Matt Gore/iconphotomedia
Campaign for Northamptonshire County Council. Picture shot with Nikon D3 and 28-70mm F2.8 lens, lit using Elinchrom Ranger with Chimera softbox camera left and high with profoto acute b and chimera letterbox further round camera left at head height. Triggered using skyports.

Picture by Matt Gore


Nikon D3 with a Nikon 17-35mm F2.8 lit with an Elinchrom Ranger fitted with a Beauty Dish on a C stand high and camera left.  I was on my own here so I needed to keep things simple, I like to use the C stand and Beauty dish when shooting outside as it has plenty of weight and doesn't easily catch any wind. (CORRECTION) I hate using the C stand and a beauty dish outside as it has plenty of weight so it's bloody heavy to carry around to different shot locations!

With that in mind if you or anyone you know is a/wants to be a photographers assistant and is in the Epsom area of Surrey UK please get them to drop me a line. I have been looking since my last assistant Adam move onto a full time job with film plus

Photo by Matt Gore/icon Nikon D2x with 28-70mm F2.8, Elinchrom studio light with chimera softbox camera right at model head height, Elinchrom light with one head and chimera softbox as subtle hair kicker camera left (designer then cropped all the effect out after art director asked for it) second head camera left with spill kill reflector and diffuser material to light the plant pot in corner of the living room. Exposure balanced to record some ambience from tungsten lamp.

Photographed by Matt Gore/iconphotomedia Phase One P25+ with a Schneider Kreuznach LS 110mm f/2.8 lens. Lit with elinchrom Ranger RX with Beauty dish high on a boom quite straight on, white paper roll somehow used outside in a wind on a calumet background support, ambient was use to slightly fill, nikon sb800 with a LEE filters cto gel and a nikon diffuser, camera right  clamped to the calumet background stand to give a warm kick and some 3D modelling.  Fantastic camera, devil to manual focus at larger apertures.  The portrait and campaign centers around Patrick Joyce, a fantastic chap and a very brave man with a wonderful family, I'll post a separate entry on the work I do with Patrick and the Motor Neurone Disease Association at a later date as it deserves more space. But for now if you have time please check out these linkshttp://www.patricktheoptimist.org/
http://www.mndassociation.org/

 Nowadays in addition to up-to-date websites (and if you don't have flash and html versions you're so last year) photographers spend time blogging, tweeting, flickr-ing and facebooking how an earth have we all got anytime to do any work?

I love the whole photo industry web 2.0 thing we have going now, and I have grown to love the ritual that has become a cafe latte and a cornflake square in my favourite corporate coffee house with free wifi. For those of you like me, who while away hours on photo blogs you would have already seen this video, for all others, enjoy the well meaning humorous take on life as a comical commercial photographer by the prolific when does he sleep?!  Zack Arias VIDEO

yes I know...now that's a photo blog!