The guys at Broncolor treated us to a wonderful 3 days and looked after us supremely well. Excellent training on their products, a guided tour of Basle, lovely food & drink and wonderful company. The range of lighting is amazing and is priced to suit all budgets. Broncolor have often been seen as expensive and too complicated to use but these issues have been addressed as extra products have been added to the range. Certainly the Scoro packs are expensive but on a par with their rivals and they out perform them especially in terms of colour temperature control and flash duration. Easy to use, the Scoro’s are top notch. Looking forward to playing with them in the UK. Their battery packs, called the Mobil A2L, are excellent too especially as they are light in weight due to the new lithium batteries and have an added bonus of being able to turn into LED lights with an adapter. This will interest photographers and film makers alike. There are many products in their range , the Grafit, the Senso,the Verso etc and you can view them all at www.bron.ch. Well worth a look.

The factory works like clockwork ( not surprising as it’s based in Switzerland ) and it employs 80 people. Every item is handcrafted, checked and re-checked. The procedures for quality control were very impressive indeed and you can see why Broncolor products are regarded as the most reliable in the business.

All in all a fantastic trip and many, many thanks to Urs, Urs 2, Gorden and especially Jacques & Claude Bron for making our visit interesting, educational and fun.

Here are some images from our visit.

All boxed up and ready to be shipped.

Making the Broncolor Para Reflector

Circuit boards and the Senso packs almost complete

Mark checking the circuit boards.

The factory floor

Dom and I playing with the Broncolor Balloon.

Dom enjoying himself and lit with a Scoro pack and Bron hardbox.

The Broncolor bunker ! Nearly all factories in Switzerland must have a bunker in case of nuclear attack or earthquakes. Quite an oddity !

The other building that I liked was a combination of old & modern architecture used at Usher Hall in the city centre. Here are a couple of my images.

Here are some more images of this beautiful city.

It really was a marvellous short break and this wonderful city is well worth a visit.

It’s certainly nicer to work in a building that isn’t crumbling around the edges and hopefully will be a huge success. The showroom is definitely a proper showcase for all the Hasselblad products and many new products that will be arriving soon.

Here are some of the first images of our new home and you must come and visit soon !

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JpNravrwZc&fs=1&hl=en_US]

See what I mean ?

Rob shot all the footage on a Canon Eos 5D MK2 with a variety of lenses. He also used a glide track, Zacuto Rig and a helicopter ! Nice !

Enjoy the video, especially as the weather is so cold here in the UK at the moment !
And a big well done to Tim, Rob and Paul.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xi6oJCY4nsc&fs=1&hl=en_GB]

I remember seeing a wonderful exhibition of cigarette butt images by Irving Penn. Large in scale, the images were very impressive and obviously memorable. My images were taken with Penn’s in mind. I find something strangely beautiful about discarded, used, and decaying objects, and wanted to show this in the images. I love the colors, the designs, and the decay. Simply beautiful. I also admire the pop art movement and these photos fit this genre.

I went for maximum quality and shot with the Hasselblad H4D 60, HC 120mm and a Profoto ringflash. The images will be able to be printed to a huge size and I’m looking foward to getting a couple printed.

Here are a selection of images. Enjoy and remember that smoking seriously damages your health.