About a month ago I was lucky enough to get the chance to go to Paris with work. I was shooting the collections as the lads bough them and also shooting films on my LCA+ (posted previously) and some video in hope we could get some different media ‘out there’. I have just had chance to mash a bit of the footage and images together to create a preview video of Rick Owens spring summer 2010 in associationwith oki-ni.com. I have done a tiny bit of video editing in the past but this is really a trial and error process for me and I would very much appreciate your opions on the final film? Really did enjoy working with moving images tho……maybe more to come !

bx

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BAPE London opened their new look store on Friday and held a party to mark the occasion at ’24’ on Kingly street. Thanks to my good friend www.neilbedford.com I got to go along and help shoot the event. We started with a photo call inside the store with Nigo, Pharrell and N*E*R*D as they checked out the shop fit and moved on to the club where Seb Chew, Mark Ronson and Nigo himself took to the decks and span some awesome records. Big thanks to Neil Bedford, Keef Urban and all the BAPE crew….

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I have just finnished retouching these portraits for a feature called ‘The New Faces of Menswear’ on www.oki-ni.com. The five designers are Martine Rose (top), Christopher Shannon, Lou Dalton, Karolina Kling and Satyen Kumar (bottom). The series of black and white portraits showing the young designers in their homes and studios are to accompany a feature on the new and exciting designers launching their collections at oki-ni. I would like to thank them all for their co-operation, I am really happy with the final set, which can be seen in here http://benbenoliel.com/?id=3 I will make further posts when the feature launches which will also be acompanied by studio images of the collections. To learn a little more about these exciting designers I have listed their websites below.

www.christophershannon.co.uk 

www.loudalton.com

www.klingbykling.com

www.satyenkumar.co.uk

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As I walked past a very punchy and tongue in cheek (fancy a quick rank?) billboard ad for ‘Rakin Live’ this morning I realized that I hadnt yet blogged the portrait he shot of me a few months back. So here it is ! It was a really enjoyable experience for me and valuable to see how a really top photographer conducts himself. I learnt a lot from the day and helped Oxfam the charity the project is helping so win win. Be sure to attend the exhibition at the truman brewery in east London where it runs from 1 Aug - 31 Sep 2009.
For those of you who havent heard of the project -

“Rankin is kicking off 2009 by inviting people across the UK
to participate in his most ambitious project to date;
Rankin Live! Using the latest in cutting edge technology
he will shoot and instantly print the portraits of 1,000 Brits
on site at his museum scale exhibition in August. Incredibly,
this process will only take 15 minutes, from the click
of the shutter to the hanging. ”

The website is really great and shows all the portraits to date - http://www.rankinlive.com/#

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Last week I was lucky enough to be given the opportunity to spend a couple of days in Paris during the latter half of Paris Fashion week. This was extremely exciting as it was my first trip to the French capital and had been wanting to visit for ages. The weather was HOT and in a busy two days we managed to see the AW10 collections by Rick Owens, Acne, Black Noir, Damir Doma and Raf Simons. The showrooms were a buz with excitement, my particular favourite being Rick Owens where all the androgynous looking models walked amongst us looking mint! I was out there to shoot the SS10 buys for www.oki-ni.com but also managed to find a little time to shoot a few rolls on my favourite little lomography LCA+. Was also lucky enough to get a couple of portraits of the Croatian born designer Damir Doma who is making waves with his latest collection/show, the portrait will be posted in the very near future……….

bx