Jonah Jones – Bond at Sixty!

Jonah Jones invited me to Babraham to join in celebrations for his sixtieth birthday; the theme being James Bond, and the plan was that I would help Catherine (Katy) to create a montage of himself sporting the body of one of his heroes, Daniel Craig as he steps from the water. This request came on the night before, so any plans I might have of sensibly having an early night went out the window! Catherine emailed me both a picture of her hero, Jonah, and Daniel taken on her phone, and neither stood a chance, so I sourced the picture from something at least a generation or two earlier and screenshotted a picture of my own to match the similar low quality of the Internet image. I also interpolated the image to nearer the size she had in mind, and sent that by email.

I arrived at Jonah's in time to take some shots of the girls getting their nails ready, and later we all headed for the Institute to prepare Catherine's other idea  which was to set up a scene such that I took shots at the venue through the rifled barrel of the guests, and had duly brought portable flash gear, but as with many last minute ideas, this failed because I was unable to sync both of my lights, so only had the single light, which was my fault and meant that despite all the setting up was never used!

For the rest of the event I planned to take handheld shots without flash at the impressive 128,000 ISO, and except for when the light was totally unavailable or the subjects moved too fast, this proved to be successful, towards the end of the evening the theatre area was used but in the opposite direction and sadly I had not been able to move all that stuff sufficiently out of view, so can be seen in the background of some of the impromptu group shots I took later from the elevation of a chair on the stage.

The whole place was brilliantly decorated for the theme; the costumes were excellent and the atmosphere of the event was fantastic with its Casino tables for both card games and Roulette wheel, and extra chips were able to be purchased and the money taken over the evening went to the NSPCC, the amount of money collected was £300 as can be seen by Liz Heard holding the jug aloft!

The whole evening was very much an extended family affair, bringing together several different strands from Jonah's six decades with everyone really enjoying themselves. Jonah himself was pleased to learn that his present had nothing to do with the Circus, unless of course one thinks of Silverstone as one!

I am splitting the shots into separate galleries: the Lodge, the main party, and the groups I photographed in the theatre.
Girls Prepare
My Setup Models
Theatre Groups
The Party Shots