TIMES / TABASCO
2004
In 2004, I was honored to win The Times/Tabasco Young Photographer of The Year Award. This achievement served as a major turning point, providing a six-month contract working for The Times Picture Desk under the guidance of Picture Editor Paul Sanders.
One of my very first assignments was photographing the vibrant Notting Hill Carnival Children's Day in 2004, capturing the colour and energy of the 40th-anniversary celebration. Notting Hill Carnival's Children's Day, also known as Family Day, was held on Sunday, August 29, 2004, as part of the annual street festival celebrating Caribbean culture. The day features family-friendly activities and a Children's Mas (carnival costume) parade
This assignment covered the "Chav" March and Rally on October 25, 2004, on Oxford Street, London. The event, organized by Goldie Lookin Chain to promote their single "Your Mother's Got a Penis," featured fans (or "Chavettes"). I have always really loved the 'chav' baby!
A key feature of the 2004 Times/Tabasco Young Photographer of The Year Award prize was the invaluable professional access it provided, including a backstage photographer's pass for London Fashion Week 2004. During this time, I had the unique opportunity to be mentored by experienced staff photographers from The Times Picture Desk, shooting shows for designers such as Ronit Zilkha, Ben de Lisi, and Betty Jackson.
This assignment was one of my very first for The Times Picture Desk, photographed on August 27, 2004. The objective was to capture the mood of Londoners dealing with a forecasted rainy bank holiday weekend. The images document scenes on and around the South Bank and the Golden Jubilee Bridge, featuring subjects like eight-year-old Abbie from Hersham sheltering under an umbrella, and the Sharp brothers from Winchester.
I covered the Labour Party Annual Conference in Brighton in September 2004 as part of my six-month contract with The Times Picture Desk. This was a high-stakes political event, as the Labour Party, led by Prime Minister Tony Blair, was in government and preparing for the next General Election. The conference was a charged environment, with intense debate and protests focusing on issues like the Iraq War and the controversial decision regarding fox hunting.
I photographed Prime Minister Tony Blair's highly controversial keynote speech at the Labour Party Annual Conference in Brighton in September 2004. The audience included senior party figures like Chancellor Gordon Brown and Deputy PM John Prescott, as well as former Labour leader and outgoing EU Commissioner Neil Kinnock. The speech was interrupted twice by protesters, including one against the Iraq War, and saw Blair acknowledge that intelligence on Saddam Hussein's weapons had been "wrong." The core of his address focused on domestic policy, outlining a "Ten-point plan" for the upcoming election.
Though my six-month contract with The Times had just ended, I covered the 2005 Glastonbury Festival for them as a freelance photojournalist.
I traveled solo by coach and camped in a small tent, only to be awakened at 5 am on Friday 24th June by an epic, catastrophic deluge of electrical storms and flash flooding. The downpour created instant rivers across the site, resulting in tents being completely submerged—a situation that immediately turned the event into major national news and a potential rescue scene. The festival grounds became an absolute nightmare to get around due to the deep, clinging mud. Compounding the technical challenge, my early digital SLR, the Nikon D100, was seizing up in the extreme wet conditions, forcing me to document the disaster and meet strict print deadlines with failing gear.
The assignment was brutal and utterly exhausting. The site's absolute carnage forced me to trudge for miles through knee-deep mud and water. With the flooding as the lead story, I was under pressure to send in images capturing the disaster's scale, all while battling a failing camera and the surrounding chaos.
By Sunday, the sun came out, bringing much-needed relief. The intense pressure shifted: my new priority was to get a vibrant, colourful front page image for The Times to signal the end of the flood chaos. Despite the deep mud lingering across the site, I focused on capturing this positive turnaround to finalize the utterly exhausting assignment.
In February 2005, I traveled to Phuket, Thailand, on a press trip sponsored by Katathani, just weeks after the Indian Ocean Tsunami. This assignment focused on documenting the initial recovery and rebuilding efforts in the severely damaged coastal region. I photographed the situation on Patong Beach, capturing the cleared wreckage and the ongoing reconstruction work, including a digger restoring sand. The coverage included the press conference at Katathani Phuket Beach Resort, where I photographed Mr. Somboon Aiyarak, Health Expert of the Phuket Provincial Chief Medical Office, who was working to address public health concerns and restore confidence in the area.
These images document the Khao Lak area, located in Phang Nga Province, Thailand, which suffered the most severe devastation from the 2004 Asian Tsunami. With wave run-ups reaching up to 12m, the flat coastal strip was completely overwhelmed, resulting in the highest casualty rate in Thailand and the complete destruction of most resorts and coastal communities in the area.
On February 4, 2005, I documented the humanitarian efforts at the Duang Prateep Foundation, a Thai charity assisting victims of the Tsunami, located approximately 30 miles from Khao Lak. This assignment focused on the children made homeless by the disaster. Photographs include five-year-old Sahadsawat Cheuykid and six-year-old Athapon Jadsadarom engaged in therapeutic painting, and Chatchada Kruakaew, a Foundation worker, holding a painting depicting the Tsunami created by a young boy staying at the camp.
