A multi-media shoot. There was the usual GeekCal silliness of Alice taking photos (for the blog), Barry filming (for the video); and Ben taking photos (for the actual calendar). But this was especially media-heavy, as our subjects are all members of the UK science press pack. Hannah Devlin and Mark Henderson from The Times science desk, Nigel Hawkes (late of Times Health), blogger Ed Yong and New Scientist editor, Roger Highfield.
Another layer was provided by Alok Jha, from the Guardian Science Weekly podcast who popped along with his microphone for a few interviews. He refused to be photographed though, and instead hid behind a biscuit. That's the pic on the left hand side. In the middle, Ed momentarily turns his back on Hannah. On the right? Well, those are some chips...
... the chips were one of our prop ideas. Each of the writers had a poke of chips wrapped in their newspaper or magazine. Or in the case of Ed, printouts of one of his blogposts. Yesterday's news being today's chip-wrapping and all that.
As the shoot progressed and the chips got a bit soggy, the mainstream media types all had some fun throwing them at Ed. We're not sure what Mark is doing to them here though (singing?).
While we were shooting we noticed a guy taking photos on his phone of us. Alice thought she recognised him from a tweetup he had organised at Broadcasting House last February. She googled him when she got home and lo, if a pic of our shoot wasn't already uploaded to his Flickr page?
Yes, our photoshoot of journalists was paparazzi-ed by the Radio Four blogger. I don't think it is possible to be more rock and roll than that. Thanks to Steve Browbick for letting us re-publish the photo here.
The shoot took place in Gordon Square (thanks to UCL for letting us use it), just a stone's throw from the location of our sixth shoot, the week before. This connection provides us with our closing question. Bloggers vs. journalism, who has the best shoes: Ben Goldacre or Roger Highfield? (....& as loads of people have said on twitter, what's with Ben's purple socks?).
