Homage or rip-off? A photocall with Engelbert Humperdinck

If you spend any time reading the national newspapers, you will realise that there are very few new ideas in photography.

On the whole they like nothing more than a nice safe picture which they have seen incarnated numerous times before. A homage if you're generous!

Jumping A-level teens being a good example. (Though even this is now wearing a bit thin…)

Pictures of people punting on the River Cam. (Though who would deny Geoff Robinson his monthly cheque from the Mail?)

Sadly however, when I see the opportunity to produce a homage, this is rarely appreciated.

(Note whenever I rip-off another idea, it's a homage btw….)

I was secretly pleased with myself when I had just the opportunity to do so with Engelbert Humperdinck prior to last year's EuroSong debacle, during a photocall at his Leicestershire Mansion.

Whilst everyone else was busy copying each other's photographs of Engel (or Hump or Arny…) on motorbike, posing with car, posing in pub, posing with flags… etc etc… I decided I would copy someone else's picture….

Can you spot what it is yet?

Anyone familiar with the work of Terry O'Neill should be transported to Beverley Hills and Faye Dunaway's photograph after her Oscar win… This time of course it's the Hump reflecting on his upcoming Eurosong victory at the side of his pool in Leicester.

Maybe I was trying to be too clever…

Anyways here is the original.

I also photographed him standing on the end of his diving board over his pool.

They didn't use that either.

Instead they used an agency picture which everyone had copied of him on his car with flags. Sometimes you can think a bit too much when you're on one of these jobs.

This blog was first published in 2013. To learn more about what I am doing now as a commercial photographer in Nottingham, check out my corporate photography page. To book a photographer to produce some homage photography, get in touch!