Latest Editorial, Portrait & Commercial Photography Projects

A selection of my most recent commissions and ongoing projects.

The work shown here spans editorial assignments, portrait commissions, documentary projects and commercial photography for organisations and publishers. It reflects current areas of focus and the range of contexts in which I am working.

New projects are added regularly.

Commercial, Documentary, Advertising, Industrial David Oates Commercial, Documentary, Advertising, Industrial David Oates

On board the Fugro Synergy for BP

By far the best thing about working as a professional photographer is the variety of the work. The camera can gain you access to environments that are wildly different each shoot day and if you’re lucky, can sometimes take you to some incredible and unexpected places. One of the most interesting of my shoots in 2022 was an assignment from bp to photograph the crew and workings of the Fugro Synergy while on a recent stop at Liverpool docks.

By far the best thing about working as a professional photographer is the variety of the work. The camera can gain you access to environments that are wildly different each shoot day and if you’re lucky, can sometimes take you to some incredible and unexpected places. One of the most interesting of my shoots in 2022 was an assignment from bp to photograph the crew and workings of the Fugro Synergy while on a recent stop at Liverpool docks.

The Synergy Modular Drilling Unit is a unique geotechnical vessel capable of delivering

high quality geotechnical data. Its design, standards and capacity make it an efficient

platform for geotechnical investigations and scientific drilling in challenging and remote offshore marine environments.

The shoot focussed on the Synergy’s role in sea bed core sampling, determining the sea bed composition to ensure that the sea bed substrate was capable of providing solid foundations for the siting of an array of wind turbines.  Sea bed composition is critical, mud, sand or silt that is too soft and uncompacted will not provide a firm enough foundation, while solid rock is impossible to drill to the depths required for the footings.

EnBW with EnBW and bp are leading the development of the Morgan and Mona – two offshore wind farms in the Irish Sea. Roughly located 30km from shore between the north coast of Wales and the Isle of Man the total area of the two farms will be 800 square kilometres – about half the size of Greater London and when complete the farm will generate 3GW of energy – enough to power an astonishing 3.4 million UK homes.

These projects are helping to achieve the UK's ambition of generating 50GW of power from offshore wind by 2030.

Fugro Synergy’s Party Chief, Jim Bridge

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Documentary, Editorial David Oates Documentary, Editorial David Oates

Brades Farm for the Financial Times

I had an informative and enjoyable day at Brades Farm near Lancaster shooting pictures for an article about the ecological impact of dairy farming for the Financial Times.

Father and son farmers John and Ed Towers add Mootral - a garlic-based supplement - to their cows feed, reducing the methane emissions from their (the cows) profuse flatulence by 20% and lowering the environmental impact of the farm by 10%.

Thanks to Ed and John for the comprehensive tour, the coffees and the much needed lend of the wellies.

I had an informative and enjoyable day at Brades Farm near Lancaster shooting pictures for an article about the ecological impact of dairy farming for the Financial Times.

Father and son farmers John and Ed Towers add Mootral - a garlic-based supplement - to their cows feed, reducing the methane emissions from their (the cows) profuse flatulence by 20% and lowering the environmental impact of the farm by 10%.

Thanks to Ed and John for the comprehensive tour, the coffees and the much needed lend of the wellies.

You can read the article, ‘How methane-producing cows leapt to the frontline of climate change’ here: t.ly/Q8T8 (subscription required)

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