Press feature & other news

From 10th-12th July 2009 Scotland's biggest music festival, T In The Park, took place in my hometown. For this event Mercedes-Benz UK supplied the local police force, Tayside Police, with a little Smart Fortwo police car to test around the festival site.
Official photographs of the highly popular little police car were taken prior to the big weekend, and I was asked to digitally enhance a selection of those photos for a nationwide press release by Mercedes-Benz UK.

The heading photograph (above) is the one used for the Mercedes press release, which has been featured in The Herald newspaper and is now spreading across the Internet. I had spent all of the Sunday evening during the music festival working at home on 10 of the official photos while The Killers headline set live on BBC Scotland blasted out from our surround sound system, yet this is the only photo that has been officially released.

Since T In The Park almost 2 weeks ago, the little Smart police car has now begun 'touring' around Scotland on official police duties with 4 of Scotland's forces, so it could be in a town near you one of these days (if you're in central Scotland)!

Today I was responsible for escorting the police Smart demonstrator across the central belt from Lothian & Borders Police HQ to Strathclyde Police HQ. Asides from 'unintentionally' breaking into the Lothian & Borders HQ, I also got to watch everyones pleasantly surprised reactions to the Smart car as we spent an hour scooting between destinations.
During an unplanned stop-off at the Mercedes-Benz Glasgow showroom, all their customers and employees (including the Mercedes mechanics working on much more sporty/luxurious/expensive models like the SL) hastily broke away from their engagements to see the quirky police car up close... (I don't think I've ever seen so many camera phones at one time!)

Saying as the environmentally-friendly Smart Fortwo police vehicle has been photographed so much, and is now making it's way around several towns in Scotland (therefore likely to cause its picture to spread across mobile phones and social networking sites like a cyber swine flu), I've decided to release some of the other T In The Park photos that I digitally enhanced for Mercedes.







On the way home I got to see Ibrox stadium (the home of Rangers Football Club) for my first time ever. (NOTE: I'm not a Rangers supporter, but I've always wanted to see their historic stadium).
Many of my close childhood friends passionately support Rangers, and one family whom I have been friends with for many years have always had a large picture of the Ibrox main entrance hanging in their home. That image of the stadium with its grand Sandstone masonry and large blue iron gates has always actively held a place in my mind, so I'm happy that I finally got to drive along the road outside the main entrance.
I'm perhaps slightly disappointed that I never got a better view of the stadium, and that it looked a lot smaller in person than the pictures in my mind led me to believe for all those years, but the historic architecture of Ibrox has certainly got a strong characteristic that I really admire and strongly regret about not being in most other football stadiums today...
(I'll save an analysis about the architecture of football stadiums for another day).