One highlight of 2018 was visiting Suresh Singh at his house in Spitalfields, London for the 'Faith and Culture in the Home' project. We hadn't met before but it turned out he played drums for a band I saw in 1980.
25/25: Ole Gunnar /
25/25. Back in April 1997, when Umbro asked me to take pictures of him kicking an empty can of pop around, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer was well on his way to becoming top goalscorer in his first season at Manchester United. It's unlikely this kind of thing would be allowed to happen now, or that there'd be no representatives from the player's agents, the club, or the client on the shoot. (For 25 Years of Mooneyphoto)
24/25: Euston Mexican Wave /
24/25. "One more thing - can you also shoot a Mexican Wave to run round the nine digital screens at Euston Station?". McDonald's Olympics campaign for Leo Burnett was complicated enough with just the one day to shoot a dozen posters and super slow motion films. It was a real team effort with a crew of more than 50 managing a 500-strong crowd and 20 actors. I had an idea how this element might work but my partners Keely Edge and Julian Hodsgon made it happen while I was outside shooting some fans in the rain. (For 25 Years of Mooneyphoto)
23/25: Allez Les Bleus! /
23/25. An element of chaos has played an important part in some of my best advertising work and this shot, for Sony’s World Cup 2014 campaign through Iris, is a good example. We cast dozens of actors to play fans and bussed in hundreds of extras to make up the crowd for our own mini-tournament. These three lads were from one of the 5-a-side teams taking part and, when they got knocked out, we had the stylists dress them up to fill a space in the stands. They went absolutely mad when another of their mates scored a spectacular goal and this is the result. (For 25 Years of Mooneyphoto)
22/25: Game Over /
22/25. Walking the streets with a camera is a good way for photographers to keep fit. Some days the benefit is purely physical but on others it can be spiritual, emotional and even material. This shot of a north London electricity sub-station made the Association of Photographers Awards in 2013. Not long after, the roof was replaced and the balls disappeared but just how many games did that chimney spoil? (For 25 Years of Mooneyphoto)
21/25: Auschwitz /
21/25. "Auschwitz is just down the road Tom, we should go and see it tomorrow." I was in the kitman's hotel room two days before England played Poland. "Not only are we going Mooney," he said, "we’re taking the boys with us.” And off he went, down the corridor to knock on manager Sven Goran Eriksson’s door. The next morning, an enterprising local photographer followed the team bus as it set off to a mystery destination on a day with no scheduled media activity. He got a telephoto lens version of this shot which made newspapers around the world and, a few months later, Sven was invited to talk about the visit at Westminster Hall in London on Holocaust Memorial Day alongside the Queen, Prime Minister and British survivors of the concentration camps. (For 25 Years of Mooneyphoto)
20/25: The Mah Jong Singers /
20/25. The Mah Jong Singers were already in full flow when I arrived at Bradford Industrial Museum for my very first commission as a photographer. The brief was to produce a set of postcards for Age Concern and promote older people's involvement in the arts. It was a lovely job to start with though I could never have imagined the shocking truth about those tea dances in Pudsey. (For 25 Years of Mooneyphoto)
19/25: Top Five Santa /
19/25. It's hard to walk past Church Street Bookshop in north London but this time I remembered to take a picture of John behind the counter. It made the Association of Photographers Awards last year and I've just read that John is considered one of the Top Five Father Christmases by Time Out magazine. (For 25 Years of Mooneyphoto)
18/25: A Day in the Life /
18/25. 109 England caps ago, Wieden+Kennedy asked me to photograph a day in the life of Wayne Rooney for Nike. He started early at the Everton training ground with tea and toast for breakfast while I avoided upsetting Duncan Ferguson any more than necessary. After a stint in goal at the end of the session, Wayne drove us back to his house and I asked what was next on the agenda. He said "Walking the dog, but I could really do with stopping for some milk and a paper first." (For 25 Years of Mooneyphoto)
17/25: Winter Olympics Supporter /
17/25. Ogilvy New York sent us to Japan to shoot a campaign for IBM, technology partner of the Winter Olympics. The brief was to capture real life around the stadiums and illustrate ideas like security, performance and, in this case, support. We had a local producer to chase after our unwitting subjects with model releases and one surprise was how offended people were when he tried to pay them a fee. (For 25 Years of Mooneyphoto)
16/25: Coffin Surfers /
16/25. This was intended to be a composite with a 1970s style stock shot background and the ‘surfboards’ supplied by us. I thought that would be asking a lot of the retoucher so suggested we do it for real instead. The agency Kemosabe agreed and gave us 48 hours and a small budget to come up with the picture. I bought the coffin lids from a family firm in Dewsbury, found a surfer couple in Manchester and gambled that Ainsdale Beach near Southport would work as the location (I took no chances with the tide though and had a local lifeboat crew on standby). It’s my favourite photograph from the successful Beyond campaign and, of course, the one with the least time and money spent on it. It’s always nice when the agency and client trust you to get something done. (For 25 Years of Mooneyphoto)
15/25: Press Pack /
15/25. For years I thought this was one of my best advertising pictures, then I realised that was my hand on the left so I couldn't possibly have taken it. The brief came from Ogilvy in New York to promote AIG's management liability coverage. The layout showed men in suits inside a lift and our job was to make them look hunted and under pressure. I decided that my business partner Julian and producer Dirk should also have cameras and we'd operate as a press pack, pouncing on the actors as the lift doors opened and getting in their faces as they tried to leave the building. What I love about this frame (and it's the only one we presented to the agency) is how Dirk's flash has lit Julian's picture. (For 25 Years of Mooneyphoto)
14/25: Christmas on Bishopsgate /
14/25. The week before Christmas I was testing an old lens in the gloom of London’s Bishopsgate when a white-bearded man stepped out of the shadows and briefly into focus. (For 25 Years of Mooneyphoto)
13/25: Dublin Riot /
13/25. The landlady put the newspaper down and called the police to say the football hooligans in the photograph were upstairs in her guesthouse. They ended up staying in Dublin quite a bit longer than planned. The night before, my first England game - a friendly against the Republic of Ireland - was abandoned after 27 minutes when the Irish scored and English fans rioted. Up to that point, I’d got almost nothing from the game but did better with the fighting on the pitch. This one got nine out of ten UK front pages. (For 25 Years of Mooneyphoto)
12/25: Building Wembley Stadium /
12/25. Wembley Stadium took the best part of five years and a billion pounds to build. For most of that time, I spent the last Friday of each month documenting progress for the FA. This early picture shows both the scale of the site and one small contribution to its development. I wonder if the men are stood on the pitch? (For 25 Years of Mooneyphoto)
11/25: The Pitbull /
11/25. I felt I could blend into the background in a football dressing room and work unnoticed but this shows I didn't always get it right. Still, I like this as a picture and it reveals something of Edgar 'The Pitbull' Davids' character as he prepared to help Spurs beat Everton 2-0 at White Hart Lane in October 2005. (For 25 Years of Mooneyphoto)
10/25: Police Chase /
10/25. The police cars were chasing a shouting woman as they turned the corner but then suddenly, from the same direction, the pace exploded as a young man in an Arsenal top sprinted towards me like he was through on goal at The Emirates. He pulled up when he realised he couldn’t win and his shoulders slumped before the fastest officer smashed into him. As witnessed last week outside Homerton Station in Hackney, east London. (For 25 Years of Mooneyphoto)
9/25: General Woodwork Supplies /
9/25. The note on the door said that, after 67 years of trading, General Woodwork Supplies was closing down. I called in and asked if I could document its final days but the elderly brothers behind the counter shook their heads. I bought a ladder and tried again. (For 25 Years of Mooneyphoto)
8/25: Beckham on the Beach /
8/25. I flew to Brazil to photograph David Beckham at the launch of his new football academy but, the night before, he drove out to see the location so I went along with my cameras and a borrowed football. The light had just about gone by the time we arrived but we managed a ten minute kickabout. I reluctantly used flash, so he wasn't completely in shadow, but this got hit by a stray shot early on and broke. The next day at the launch, I showed the best frames from the beach to David and his team and they agreed to release a few along with the official photographs. They got quite a bit of press coverage which apparently didn't go down well with Fabio Capello, the new England manager. He left Beckham out of his first squad, announced a couple of days later, and apparently stranded him on 99 caps... (For 25 Years of Mooneyphoto)
7/25: New York Weather Check /
7/25. It was the perfect brief for a street photographer: A travel insurer wanted a set of pictures that avoided people but illustrated words like ‘security’, ‘together’ and ‘home’. I spotted this New Yorker checking the weather on my way from Dakar to São Paulo. (For 25 Years of Mooneyphoto)