I had a really interesting last minute job at the University recently. Eminent geneticist and the man that brought us DNA testing and profiling, Sir Alec Jeffreys, is having his portrait painted by Tess Barnes, who has an impressive list of subjects that include Michael Portfillo, Carole Vorderman and Camila Batmanghelidjh of the Kid’s Company. I went along to his office briefly to capture the last of six 2 hour sittings so there was a record of the sessions. Brief it most certainly was as I had all of 10 minutes to work out the best angles whilst blending in and not disturbing them!

Note to self: must blog more often. And tweet. Monthly blogs and a grand total of 3 lifetime tweets are hardly harnessing the power of social media…

Sometimes you have minutes to capture the right shots and this shoot at the end of the summer was a case in point. The Pro VC of the University of Leicester, Keith Schurer, and three members of the Leicestershire Asian Business Association were on very tight schedules but we needed to capture this photo opportunity marking the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding.

It was such a pleasure to meet and shake hands with the great man on his flying visit to Leicester to receive his honorary Doctorate of Letters from the University during degree week. He had a punishing schedule coming from and back to Cape Town in one day but was charming and patient throughout with an infectious laugh. Before joining the rest of the press pack at De Montfort Hall, I spent some time with him at the University Chaplaincy and then on his journey to the David Wilson building for lunch. A BBC radio interviewer had told him earlier that he’ll always be associated with a lower second class degree and he had the good humour to congratulate the graduating students on getting their firsts, two-ones and ‘what people call a Desmond.’  You can see how the Leicester Mercury covered the story here.

Better late than never… The Percy Gee building at the University of Leicester was officially opened recently with a high profile ceremony that included VC Bob Burgess, President of the NUS Aaron Porter, lots of mayors and mayoresses and the family of Percy Gee. The event focused on the unveiling of the Touching Pair statue by Deidrie Hubbard and the official opening plaque; and also included team shots of the those involved in the design and construction of the impressive building.

The Labour Market Studies event at the University of Leicester welcomed distance learning students at Doctorate level to a series of talks, workshops and seminars (I hope I’ve got that right!). They’d travelled from all parts of the globe and were studying a range of diverse subjects – the Barbados banking system since 1974 stuck in my mind. The event also included a talk by Vice Chancellor Bob Burgess on ‘Exploring Ethnography’, which was a real treat for someone that read his books as part of Sociology ‘O’ level in the dim and distant past…

The main event of the Literary Leicester Festival brought feminist icon, Germaine Greer, to the University of Leicester for a talk on Forty Years of Feminism and Fun, followed up by an unexpected book signing.

I recently worked on a scaled down version of last year’s CLAHRC conference, this time held at the Henry Wellcome building at the University of Leicester. It was an interesting mix of talks, Q&A sessions and networking for the CLAHRC team, associates and review team.

At the end of the last academic term, I worked on the Chemistry Activity Day at the University of Leicester – organised by the Colleges and University Learning Network. It was a great day designed to introduce college students to chemistry as a study subject and included an ester lab session, visual chemistry demonstration (with lots of smoke and bangs!) and business game for the competitive amongst them.

You can see a selection of the images here along with other recent shoots for the University.

It was a real pleasure to be involved in the recent Leicestershire’s Got Enterprising Business Talent project organised by the Colleges-University of Leicester Network (CULN). Colleges across the county competed in Dragons Den-style competitions showcasing their enterprising business ideas.  So, I was there for the two days of filming/shooting the College winners and for the Grand Finale event held at The City Rooms in Leicester and hosted by original Dragon and Yo Sushi founder, Simon Woodroffe. There are great stories attached to each college and idea, none more so than for the eventual winners, North Warwickshire and Hinckley College with their Companion Coffins concept.

This week I was commissioned to work on the University-hosted event called Enterprise Matters: Unleashing Enterprise Talent in the FE Sector held at the John Foster Hall on Manor Road. It’s great to see the effort and measures in place to encourage today’s student to be entrepeneurial and to think about their career prospects. Things have certainly changed from our school ‘careers’ service that consisted of a few untouched leaflets…

Amongst all of the delegates of college representatives and service providers was guest speaker, Sabirul Islam. Company CEO, trader, author of ‘The World at Your Feet’ and entrepeneur. His boundless energy, enthusiasm and determination to succeed was really impressive and inspirational to all, not just the young.