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)
6/25: Defoe Celebration /
6/25. I loved working for Spurs at White Hart Lane and, within reason, pretty much had the run of the place (just like Jermain Defoe). Most football snappers would be disappointed when a player turns away to celebrate but I had quite an open brief so was happy to focus on the fans. I also like to have a different perspective so was in one of the elevated TV positions with an 800mm telephoto which is probably twice as long as the standard football lens. The club published the photograph widely and I’ve always wondered how many of the fans spotted themselves - there’s about a hundred of them in there and it’s interesting to see the range of expressions. This kind of real-world experience has been invaluable in setting up the advertising productions we’ve done with fans for clients like McDonald’s, Sony, Coca-Cola and EE. (For 25 Years of Mooneyphoto)
5/25: World Cup Warm-up /
5/25. With England’s participation in this summer’s Russian World Cup making the news, I’m reminded of the Finals in Germany 12 years ago when I was working behind the scenes with the senior men’s team. This picture, taken just before the game against Trinidad and Tobago in Nürnberg, is one of my favourites but makes me wince slightly when I think of the circumstances. The dressing room is a busy place but I was drawn to the showers by the sound of metal studs on tiles and a football hammering against the wall. I wasn’t surprised to find Wayne Rooney in there as he was often first to be changed and almost always had a ball so I said I’d trust him not to hit me and sat on the floor in the firing line. He had one more shot while I was there and it grazed the top of my head which no doubt explains the mischievous look on his face. (For 25 Years of Mooneyphoto)
4/25: Sisters /
4/25. Somebody once asked if I get permission from the people I photograph on the street (or the bus) and I have to say I don't. It would be interfering, risk changing the dynamic and they might say no. It's important to be considerate and polite of course and I don't think that's a contradiction. Anyway, I reckon these four ladies travel around London on the 476 just waiting for someone to take their picture. Surely they must be sisters? If only I'd asked them. (For 25 Years of Mooneyphoto)
3/25: Network Q Kiss /
“If anything gets overheated, it won’t be the car” ran the headline on this Vauxhall Network Q shot for Cogent and it’s always been a favourite. The kissing couple were a real item discovered by Keely, our producer, in a corner of Leeds’ Hi-Fi Club one Saturday night while the romantic pastel lighting and twinkling stars came courtesy of Harvey Nichols’ window display. If I had to explain the rearview mirror casting the shadow across his eyes, I’d say it was inspired by the masked ball in Romeo and Juliet… (For 25 Years of Mooneyphoto)
2/25: Umbro Coat /
This is one of four ads we shot as tests over a couple of days in the late 1990s. Dave Godfree and Nick Hastings, the creative team from DMB&B, needed something fast to present at a sales conference so faxed over the layouts and left us to it. There wasn't much of a budget so my nephew Luke and two of his mates met us at Leeds Road Playing Fields in Huddersfield one night after school. They asked what I wanted them to do so I said “set up some goals with your coats and start taking shots”. 20 rolls of film later, we called it a day and they went home for their teas. This is the very first of the 720 pictures I took and I remember it clearly because after the ball hit the post, it continued with some velocity and hit me where it hurts. The pictures went down so well that a budget was found and we were invited to do them ‘properly’. I didn't think we’d capture such special moments again and luckily the agency agreed, paying us the money as a usage fee for the tests instead. The campaign went on to win a Gold at the Cannes Lions, a Silver at the Campaign Press Awards and a D&AD Pencil. (For 25 Years of Mooneyphoto)
1/25: Menin Gate /
It’s 25 years since I started out as a photographer and I’ve been thinking about the pictures that have been important to me. I took this one, of the Menin Gate in Ypres, Belgium, while I was on tour playing guitar with a band in the early 1990s. After the soundcheck, I went out for a walk with my new Nikon, turned a corner and was stopped in my tracks by the the Memorial to the Missing with its 54,000 names from World War One. I lost all sense of time as I tried to cover every angle but eventually wandered back to the venue. As I got closer and heard faint but familiar music, I thought it odd they were playing one of our records. Then I realised it was live, the band were on stage and I was late so the roadie was playing guitar. He was much better than me anyway and this frame really got me thinking I might be better at composing photographs.