Peter Dibdin Photography

Luminous Creative are small but perfectly formed design consultancy based in Edinburgh. I’ve had the pleasure of collaborating with them on several projects over the past few years – for clients like ASDA, Mara Seaweed, Zeneth and others. For our most recent collaboration, however, they were the client. They were in the process of updating their website and called me to take some new headshots of the team and website images, which of course, I was delighted to do.

Mary-Jane Moore of Luminous Creative

It barely seems a year since my photoshoot for Will Pickvance’s festival show, Pianomorphosis, but a year it has been. In that time, Will’s become a father for the first time, toured his show to Asia, and devised the next show in his series – Pianologues. And I was delighted to be asked back by Will to create an image for that new show.

Will Pickvance

This time, I thought rather than hearing from me, I’d share a blog that my friend Tessa Simpson from brilliant design agency, O Street, has written about my collaboration with them on Kenema and a recent exhibition that we hosted in London. I’ve enjoyed working with O Street on many a client project and this is a personal project that is particularly close to my heart, so it was great that they wanted to get involved.

Lucy is the Interim Chief Executive of the National Theatre of Scotland and I had the pleasure of photographing her a couple of weeks ago. Here’s a couple of my favourite images from the shoot.

A nice bit of news to share with you this chilly Friday afternoon – I am delighted to announce that three of my images have been selected for Creative Review’s Photography Annual 2016. Every year, a judging panel of industry experts selects photographs which present ‘the best in visual communications from the past year’, to celebrate new work in the field of photography. The winners feature in renowned creative magazine, Creative Review. The standard is always world-class, so as you can imagine, I was humbled and delighted when I heard the news last month that I was to be part of the selection. In fact, it was a very difficult secret to keep.

In the flurry of “International day of the….” events currently appearing, there seems to be a day for everything. But today being the United Nations’ International Day of the Girl Child seems something really worth celebrating and making note of. Those that follow this blog will know that I support, in any way I possibly can, Swawou – a small school in Kenema, Sierra Leone. Today I take my hat off to them.

Student at Swawou School, Sierra Leone.

Learning to smile.

Today is World Smile Day. As a portrait photographer, I spend a lot of my time studying people’s faces and their smiles. Sometimes I want people to smile in my photos and sometimes I don’t. It all depends on what I am trying to capture. But in this age of selfies, and cameras on mobile phones, I’ve noticed the decline of the smile and the rise of the pout.

Today, tickets went on sale for the National Theatre of Scotland’s exciting new project, Home Away 2016. In autumn 2016, ten theatre companies from around the world will come together to present a series of productions telling stories from their location. Some weeks ago, Jack (my loyal dog-come-photography assistant) and I packed my camera and headed out to five of these locations across Scotland, to create portraits of some of the participants in the productions.

Home and Away – National Theatre of Scotland. Design by Gabriella Marcella at Risotto

As you may know, I’m working on an exciting project at the moment, with long-time collaborators, O Street, and a construction organisation who I volunteered with in Sierra Leone called Orkidstudio. The project actually began in 2014, when I travelled to Kenema with Orkidstudio, photographing a community who were building a new school for Swawou School Foundation. The building was to provide new facilities for local, underprivileged girls to get a better education, joining up innovative design and construction techniques to make a building that would work for years to come.

A market stallholder selling fruit and vegetables in Kenema

This month, I’ve swapped my studio in Summerhall for the altogether warmer climes of Sierra Leone. I first went in 2014 with a Scottish architecture / construction charity, OrkidStudio, to take some photos of a new girls school they were building in Kenema. I instantly fell in love with Sierra Leone, but shortly after I returned to Scotland, was devastated to hear about the Ebola outbreak in the region I was just in. When I looked at my photos I would wonder how my new friends there were coping with this tragic pandemic, and feel helpless to their fight.

One of the Swawou School girls in her new classroom.