Simon Keitch Photography Blog

Mary Quicke - Quickes Traditional

Mary Quicke (MBE) of Quickes Traditional; the Quickes family has farmed at Newton St Cyres in Devon for over 450 years and are now the largest traditional cheese maker in the United Kingdom. While researching the subject I came across some pictures of their enormous cheese store and knew straight away it would be the perfect location for the portrait. When arriving on location without the benefit of a prior tech-scout things can often change completely; concepts originally thought to be possible actually aren’t, and new unforeseen opportunities arise, but on this occasion the final portrait looks exactly as I planned it thanks in part to a series of 360 degree panoramas I found on a food blog called FX Cuisine; you can see one of the cheese store HERE.

The store is pretty impressive and definitely one of the stinkier locations I’ve worked in for sure. It was a great pleasure to meet Mary whose love and enthusiasm for both cheese and farming is immediately evident and it’s no surprise that the end product is so good with that kind of infectious attitude. Check out Quickes Traditional online at www.quickes.co.uk where you can find your local stockist, or call in to the farm shop if you’re in the area.

The new issue of FourFourTwo football magazine is now on the newstands featuring an article I shot for them recently about the Royal Marines Amateur Football Club. This was an interesting feature to work on; the RM AFC team’s home pitch is based across the road from the Royal Marines Commando Training Centre at Lympstone, close to Exeter in Devon although the team draws players from the camps at Taunton, Plymouth and Chivenor also, with a high player turnover as training exercises and deployments dictates a different line-up each week and a player pool of around 50 individuals in total. The assignment brief called for me to attend one of the team’s weekly matches, with a fairly long shot-list including a full team portrait and documentary images and while I’d ticked all the boxes, it wasn’t really working for me and I knew there had to be a better way to photograph this subject and so I arranged to meet up with Colour Sergeant Richard Hope a few days after the original photo-shoot to try a different tack. I set up some lights at the edge of the pitch and then we ran through a few different ideas; some keepy-uppy, some kicking the ball, and the static shot which made the final double-page-spread opener above. Big thanks to FourFourTwo designer David Robinson for assigning me plus Art Editor Anth Moore for doing such a nice job with layout and reproduction.

Out takes:

One of my band portraits of the Plymouth based group Brotherhood Of The Lake made it into the current issue of Rock Sound Magazine available now from all good newsagents… The band’s new album ‘Iron Sails” will be released on June 28th 2010 and gets a glowing write up by Rock Sound, stating: ‘we promise you won’t hear as many records as good as this in 2010…’.

I had an assignment shooting some collateral stock photos for the IPC cycling health and lifestyle magazines a while back (Cycling Weekly, Cycling Active and Health and Fitness for Cyclists) and this one is the first to go to print and my first Cycling Weekly cover. A little different for Cycling Weekly I think and a sign that perhaps natural light images are coming back into fashion. The model is James Scawn who manages the Cycle Scene bike shop in Plymouth and the photo was shot near Postbridge way up on the top of Dartmoor.