I am David Bailey

My name is David Bailey. There is another bloke called David Bailey who, when I was a teenager at school, caused me some unintentional indirect irritation. It wasn't his fault really, it was the fault of one of those Japanese camera makers, namely, Olympus. You see, they made a series of adverts with various tag lines like "David Bailey, who's he?" - you can understand why my peers used it as reference to ensure my ridicule and a reason I now prefer to be referred to by the more casual sounding Dave.

I guess this is the right place then

However, this week I'm pleased to say my name association has paid off. I do have some interest in photography, and not just your normal holiday snap stuff, but occasionally I take to trying to take really good pictures. Last week, several very good people alerted me to the fact that Samsung were giving away cameras to people called David Bailey as part of a campaign called We Are David Bailey. All I had to do was pop the short journey down to London and take part in the shooting of a TV commercial. They also promised to pay expenses, cool.

The film crew, filming David Baileys
taking pictures of models

Apparently I was supposed to take pictures of the stuff they had arranged in the building, like sexy models, a very interesting female contortionist and various still life stuff. The fact is, I was quite interested in the professional film crew and all their equpment, I ended up taking pictures of them, filming various David Baileys taking pictures.

There were a lot of David Baileys, 143 in total, including the man himself. Unfortunately not quite enough to break the world record of the most number people with the same name in the same place, but close. If everyone who had applied and been accepted had turned up then apparently we'd have got the record. It seems not all David Baileys are as good to their word as me.

Just a few David Baileys

Well, there you go

Some bloke who shares my name

It might be sunny, but for a proper shoot you just HAVE to have great big lights.

You might all be wondering what on earth this has to do with beer. Well, as part of my blag to get accepted on the program I talked about Hardknott, my blog and the videoing I've been doing. The researcher had already found me online but figured I couldn't possibly be stupid enough to travel all the way down to London. I also indicated that I liked the video facility of the camera and hoped to be using it for Hardknott promotional stuff later. Watch this space for some combined Olympus DSLR, JVC video and Samsung NX1000 Smart Camera productions from the Hardknott production team.

Meanwhile, after the event we had to pick the van back up from a friends pub, Land of Liberty, Peace and Plenty, who as it happened have a hopbine growing in the car park. Here we have a couple of picies, one with my trusty Olympus and one with the new Samsung. Make your own mind up.

Picture of hop cones taken with Samsung NX100

Picture of hop cones taken with an Olympus E-420