India’s new home of Formula One, The Buddh International Circuit.  – Earlier this year I traveled to New Delhi, India with Charlie Whiting.
Head of the F1 Technical Department, to take photographs while he inspected the building of this exciting new Circuit.
Shot for the F.I.A Institute magazine.
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Scuderia Toro Rosso – Complete team creative for season 2011.
Working with London-based creative agency, Realise Creative, I was commissioned to produce their
brand imagery for the 2011 season.
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Nick Ashley-Cooper - The Earl of Shaftesbury
Shot at his home, the amazing St Giles House in Wimbourne St Giles, Dorset.
This was for the ‘Heroes’ section of the magazine. Although the brief was for only one portrait, we had almost an hour to shoot.
This meant I was able to get 3 to 4 set-ups. In the end they used more than one photo and made the feature bigger.
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Guardian Weekend - ‘Over To You Kid.’
This was a feature shot over the course of 3 to 4 weeks.
Columnists for the magazine got their children to do their jobs for them.
Seemingly straight forward, although they do say don’t work with children and animals!

Damon and Josh Hill - The Racing Driver Family.
This was a shoot for Car Magazine, at Silverstone race track.
Traveling there with a journalist we had arranged to meet Damon at the track while his son Josh was testing for his Formula Renault team.
The aim was get to some portraits of the 2 of them together, followed by some pictures around the garage.

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Terry Fullerton - World Karting Champion 1973.
This year sees the release of a new documentary about the racing driver Ayrton Senna.
Terry raced karts against Senna in the 70s and this shoot was done at Terry’s home in Norfolk for Autosport Magazine.
In one interview Senna was asked, “Who is the best driver you have ever driven against?”
The expected answer was his bitter rival and team-mate at Mclaren, Alain Prost…. Senna paused and said,
“Terry Fullerton. I enjoyed very much driving with him because he was fast, he was consistent… he was a very complete driver. I have that as a very good memory.”

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2010 Taylor Wessing - Ann Widdecombe and Jon Snow.
I have been selected for the 2010 Tayor Wessing, so you’ll be able to see this photo ‘Annie and Johnny’ at this year’s exhibition.
Showing at the National Portrait Gallery London from November.
Taken as part of the Guardian Weekend feature in the portraits section of my website.
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Red Bull Racing’s Formula One Teams – Part of the Team
Red Bull’s Formula One team, this year commissioned Racing Gold to design a selection of functional objects to be made out of their Formula One racing cars.
I was asked to photograph these objects for a catalogue as well as other promotional material for the team.
This is a bit of a departure from the portrait and reportage stuff I normally get asked to do, but if nothing else, I’m versatile.
Shot in the studio and on location at the team’s secret factory facility, Bradbourne Drive, Tilbrook, Milton Keynes. UK.
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Beer Girl’s - Shot during a Yomiuri Giants home game at the Tokyo Dome, Japan.
These girls run around the grandstands either pouring beer from cans,
or by taps, from the Ghostbuster-esk backpacks filled with beer.
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Hayato Sakamoto – Japanese Baseball Star.
This year I was lucky enough to travel to Tokyo to photograph Hayato Sakamoto, a superstar in the world of Japanese baseball.
I was asked to cover the goings on at an away game and a home game for his team the Yomiuri Giants.
This also included a couple of brief meetings to shoot a portrait for the feature.
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ITS THE STIG! - And also Sue Judd.
Shot as part of the ‘Unseen TV’ feature for the Guardian Weekend.
Ben Collins = The Stig, Legend!
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Congratulations Katie !.
Katie Taylor who I shot for a feature for the Red Bulletin has just won her third world title.
Looking good for the gold in London Katie.
And also congratulations me, this feature on Katie has been selected for the 2010 Creative Review Photography Annual.
The Photography Annual is a collection of the best photography from the previous 12 months,
so really happy to make this years addition.
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Katie Taylor, Boxer.
Shot in the Ukraine at the Women’s European Boxing Championships, and in Bray, Republic of Ireland.
This dual-location shoot is the kind of job I relish. I travelled to the Ukraine for four days to follow Katie in her bid to regain her European crown.
I then flew to Bray, a small seaside town close to Dublin, to shoot her in her dad’s gym for the cover.
Many of my jobs have only allowed me five minutes with a subject and access to the last couple of hours of an event.
This time, it was great to have three complete days during the competitions in the Ukraine and a good 40 minutes in Ireland to shoot the portraits.
It also helped that Katie was a pleasure to work with – and I’m not just saying that because she can kick my head in.
Take a look at the rest of the photos on the other pages of my site.
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Promotional Pack, For theRiccadro Mortara round the world record attempt.
www.360 World Record
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In 2010 Swiss aviatorRiccardo Mortara and his crew set a new world record for the fastest flight around the world in a 9,000-12,000kg aircraft.
For the build up to the record attempt and working as part of Realise Creative, I was commissioned to produce all the
photography for the press and media content.
This involved photographing all the team members in various locations as well as photographing the aircraft on the ground and in the air.
The photos were then available for press and media usage via online galleries and were also used to produce a 28 page booklet about the world

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Cover feature shot for the Guardian weekend Magazine.
Shot over 10 days this was really hectic and, just a little bit stressfull.
Time was tight and getting everyone together in the same places at the right time took a lot of hard work from the people at Guardian.
Because the allotted time also had to include the interview for the piece I found I had little over 10 minutes for each shoot,
with each one requiring portraits as well as the more fly-on-the-wall stuff,
I’m really pleased with the results though.
Take a look at the rest of the photos on the other pages of my site.
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Toro Ross F1 Team, 2010 Media Press Pack.
These five images are taken from this years media press pack for the Toro Rosso Formula One team.
Taken on location in Italy and England, the images are built using several photos to create one master image.
Embedded with links, information appears when parts of the images are selected. The main aim of the project
was to produce a more environmentally friendly approach to the media pack.
The pack was then distributed to the press on USB sticks. The full all singing, all dancing, interactive versions
will be added to this site soon. Until then you can visit,

http://www.tororosso.com/cs/Satellite/en_INT/Toro-Rosso/001242807620404
Follow the links for ‘The Big Picture’ on the left hand side.

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Rachel Atherton, Downhill Mountain Bike Racer.
UCI Mountain Bike World Champion, Rachel’s at the top of her sport in the UK and world wide.
I travelled to the Atherton’s home in the Snowdonia National Park, nestled in the Welsh countryside.
The brief for the cover shot was very precise, and with pre-planning it meant I got the most out of the short time I had with Rachel.
With the time left over from shooting the cover, I was able to make the most of the location and shot some full length portraits outside.
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Easkey Britton, Surfer
For this shoot I traveled over to Ireland once again, this time over to the west coast and a place called Rossnowlag.
Despite it being the coldest day since records began and Easkey having to get out of her sickbed for the shoot, everything went well.
The shoot was for Red Bull Ireland and luckily the art director came along with me and my assistant
so I had plenty of hands stopping all my equipment blowing away.
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Cover feature shot for the Guardian weekend Magazine - Celebrity blind date special
This was a special celebrity addition of the feature that runs weekly in the Weekend magazine.
Shot in various restaurants and bars scatter over London, this was all a bit bonkers.
Some of the shots I had to do after the dates then comp the images together to make it look like they were together.
Some of the shots i had to do after the dates, in the hope they had’nt fallen out half way through the mains.
And some of them I had to do at the start of the dates, before they had even met or got to know each other properly.
All in all, worked out nicely though.


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Sebastian Vettel, Hungarian Grand Prix.
I spent the last 4 years working for the Red Bulletin,back when it was a Formula One magazine,
and in that time went to every race all over the world. Although the F1 version of the magazine ended last year,
I was back at the Hungarian Grand Prix this season. My job was simple: follow Red Bull Racings Sebastian Vettel round for the weekend and take photos of him.
Published in the Red Bulletin this Autumn.
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Oxygen Music Festival, Dublin.
I was at the festival shooting a reportage of DJ David Holmes for The Red Bulletin.
The weather was awful and Mr Holmes only showed for about ten minutes all weekend (nice guy though so no complaints) but I kept myself entertained shooting straight-ups and stuff.
I’ll post the David Holmes pictures after they’ve been published.

Common, Melbourne Australia, Red Bull Formula one season launch party.
I’d forgotten I’d done this shoot until it came up in conversation with some friends at the weekend.
The girls who normally glaze over when I tell tales of taking photos of Jenson Button or Tori Amos suddenly perked up when it was mentioned I’d shot Common.
The shoot was backstage at the F1 launch party for Red bull in Melbourne.
Common was booked to play at the party and i was commissioned to get a portrait of him.I waited backstage for him for what was supposed to be 10 minutes after the gig.
While I was waiting I managed to get a peek and take a few of him on stage.

Jaime Alguersuari, Racing Driver, shot at Spa Francorchamps in Lommel Belgium.
This was for the same section of the The Red Bulletin magazine as the Max Nagi shoot from the previous month. The brief was the same, for one photo to go in the Heroes section of the magazine.
Traveling to the race track at Spa is always good and although the Formula One Grand Prix there is great it’s nice visiting the place when its a little quieter.
I had the usual 10 minutes and everything went nice and smoothly. I’ve photographed Jaime before so he’s used to my direction.
It also helped that the guys in the garage were happy to go off and have a tea break so I wasn’t having to shoot around lots of people.
Jaime’s just been announced as the new Red Bull reserve driver so good luck to him.
Enter Mark Webber into some triathlons and you never know you might get that F1 seat in no time.


Brand I.D Images for Euro RSCG London. These images were shot a few years back for the company branding.
The company’s logo is a five-pointed star and they wanted to produce a series of images that incorporated that into the image.
I had about a week to come up with six finished images and these photos were then used on business cards,
bags, video and dvd covers and various other bits of promotional material.
They even made one enormous print that took up the entire wall of the reception so that everyone who worked in or visited the building was treated to seeing it everyday… for years.
I guess Euro RSCG staff either like my work or hate it by now. I hope its the latter.



Max Nagi, MotorX rider, shot at home in Lommel Belgium.
This was a shoot for this month’s issue of The Red Bulletin, both the UK and International editions.
Although for the UK edition they wanted me to come up with just one portrait image,
it was also in the brief to shoot some variations as the International edition wanted to have some options for running the feature over more than the two pages the UK was running.
I travelled to Lommel in Belgium, which is about 20k from the border to the Netherlands.
Luckily for me the journalist, who was flying in from Austria, couldn’t get there due to bad weather, so the 15 minutes I had for photos turned into an hour.
Unluckily, the same bad weather that stopped the journalist from landing was not helping my lights stay upright or keeping my camera and lens dry
I resorted to shooting enough material indoors at his team’s base, about 10 minutes from his home, then, once I had what I needed from inside, I decided to try to get what I could outdoors.
I ended up attaching my portable lights to the side of my car, with the softbox running out of the boot.
The rain was really coming down but thankfully the wind was strong enough that the rain was almost horizontal, from one side, so the car and boot were protecting the light and power pack.
Once set up, Max was pretty flexible with what I wanted to do and didn’t mind covering himself in mud for the sake of a few photos.

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Welcome to the all new Thomas Butler Photographer website, News Section
It contains a selection of my best – or more interesting – projects, and i aim to update it regually as I undertake new commissions.
In this News section you will find examples of projects I am working on, projects which are either commissioned or personal and an explanation of my approach to each one.
Ill show them first In this section before moving them into one of the categories listed at the top.
Mixmag: My First Assignment
After graduating from Uni I moved down to London right away I had done some work for The Face and The Big Issue.
My very first assignment once in the capital was an eight-page fashion shoot for Mixmag, shot one night in Southend-On-Sea.
The idea was to set the photos up to look like a documentary project rather than a fashion shoot. Myself and the stylist Camilla Turner drove down in a van with a selection of clothes one Saturday night.
We had arranged to meet, via Max Power magazine, some guys who like to spend their weekends driving up and down the Esplanade.
This way we knew we’d have a few people to shoot, and our Max Power contacts would make it easier to find others. We then got the amenable ones to dress up and shot them in or around there cars.
It was all taken on 6×6 film, which helped the style of the piece. Also, as a photographer, it’s always nice to see your images uncropped and as you took them.
The designers did a great job of keeping the pages simple and making my photos look their best.
It was some years ago, but it’s still one of my favorite assignments and contains some of my favorite shots.
I’ll be updating the images and explaining current and previous projects on a regular basis. So keep checking back.
Thomas Butler Photographer



All Images ©Thomas Butler Photographer 2009.

For all usage contact me directly.