David Bailey

These Olympus commercials from the 1980s show that attitudes towards gear never really change

Feb 21, 2019 by John Aldred 2 Comments

Those of us in the UK who grew up in the 1980s will mostly remember George Cole as the lovable rogue Arthur Daley in the TV show Minder, which ran from 1979 until 1994. But this wasn’t all he was doing. In the ’80s, he was also moonlighting in adverts for Olympus, along with legendary fashion and portrait photographer David Bailey.

These TV commercials advertise the fancy “new” all-in-one Olympus cameras, like the Olympus AZ 300 Super Zoom, Olympus Trip AF, and the Olympus AF-10, and they show that attitudes towards gear and elitism have never really changed. I think we all know people like this, even if just online if not in real life.

Watch as Rankin recreates one of David Bailey’s iconic photographs with Bailey’s help

Apr 11, 2016 by John Aldred 1 Comment

When it comes to the names of those that have changed the photography world over the years, fashion photographer David Bailey is often one of the first that comes to mind. Leading the fashion photography of the 60s with cohorts Terence Donovan and Brian Duffy, they captured and created the “Swinging London”, and set the stage for things to come.

Coming back to today, we have John Rankin Waddell (aka Rankin), a high profile fashion photographer based in London, who in 2008 made a documentary entitled “Seven Photographs that Changed Fashion” in which creates his own tributes to iconic images by Richard Avedon, Helmut Newton, Herb Ritts, David Bailey, Guy Bourdin, Cecil Beaton, and Erwin Blumenfeld.

Dave Williams is an accomplished travel photographer, writer, and best-selling author from the UK. He is also a photography educator and published Aurora expert. Dave has traveled extensively in recent years, capturing stunning images from around the world in a modified van. His work has been featured in various publications and he has worked with notable brands such as Skoda, EE, Boeing, Huawei, Microsoft, BMW, Conde Nast, Electronic Arts, Discovery, BBC, The Guardian, ESPN, NBC, and many others.

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