Pie, mash and homemade grid spots

So it's been a while since my last post, and there's a very good reason for this: a run of frankly the most appalling luck since some bankers in America said 'You know what? We should give mortgages to people who can't afford them!'. There have been even more snapped chains, concussions, stolen credit cards, Indian visa bureaucracy putting a nix on my trip to the Tour of Mumbai, and that's just the tip of the iceberg.

So to take the bad taste out of my mouth since the India Incident, I've decided to plow my downtime until Gent-Wevelgem into shooting a project on London's most traditional fast food: pie 'n' mash. This morning was the first shoot at Manzes' Pie and Mash Shop on Peckham high street. Manzes is the oldest running chain of pie and mash shops in London, with the first in Tower Bridge opened in 1905. Graham, the proprietor and grandson of Michele Manze, who opened the first shop all those years ago, is now in charge and is taking pie and mash into the digital age with online ordering and 2-day delivery to anywhere in the UK. Not too long ago, he delivered a few pies to a private jet company. Turns out David Beckham wanted a few for his flight to LA…

Knowing that I'd be shooting in a place with poor available light and lots of reflective white surfaces, I decided that grids would be the best bet for this. A softbox would have just nuked everything and made it all rather flat and boring. Also, since this was shot in the middle of the shop on a busy Friday lunchtime, you would have seen more of all the diners eating, taking the focus away from Graham.

The problem was, though, that since I bought a load of Alien Bee kit, I'd have to order the grids from the states, pay shipping and import tax, and at the end of all that, I'd be out of pocket to the tune of around £100. Rather than do this, I decided to make my out of straws and duct tape. to be fair, there were two days of sitting around cutting straws. I made two, one 10 degree, and one 20 degree, and cut 500 straws into four one inch-long strips. Meaning there are somewhere in the region of 2000 individual pieces in these two grids. But on the plus side, the total cost to me was only £3, and they work just as well as the ones I would have bought, only downside is I can't use the modelling lights when I use them otherwise they'd melt.

Welcome to my life for the last two days…

Watch out for the full completed pie and mash story sometime in the next couple of weeks, that and Gent-Wevelgem, where I'll be situated on the Kemmelberg taking photos of people in bars watching bike races. Should be good.

Till next time.