Shoot ten: Brian Cox and Gia Milinovich

A domestic setting for our tenth shoot, at home with Prof Brian Cox, Gia Milinovich, baby George and their two cats.

We really liked the idea of having a geek couple for one of our shoots, and Brian and Gia seemed like the obvious first choice. Gia's been taking some time off work recently, but she is well known for media work on science and technology, and is a long-time blogger. She's also the reason Jonathan Ross is on twitter (but we'll forgive her). Brian Cox recently presented the acclaimed Wonders of the Solar System for the BBC, and is currently filming a follow-up series. He is also a working scientist; writes for the Sun; was scientific adviser on the movie Sunshine; and is becoming well known for his advocacy of science funding. Oh, and he used to be a rock star.

Inspiration for this shoot came from a great suggestion on twitter to show Brian struggling with the instruction manual to a microwave. We folded in the idea of a geek couple, added retro theme into this, and the idea evolved into a set complete with broken toaster, instruction manual and martini glasses, all shot in Brian and Gia's kitchen. The cats were quite taken with all our audio, photography, video and lighting equipment.

Once we could tear Barry away from the cats, we did a quick interview with Brian and Gia about what they felt geekiness means. To Brian, a geek is someone obsessed with how the universe works and the tools for understanding the universe, including cameras and buses. The reason he mentioned buses was that, as 6 year old, Brian was a bit of a bus-spotter. Well, "bit of" is probably an understatement: he would stare out of his front window for hours collecting the serial numbers of buses (not route numbers, not registration numbers: the serial numbers). He has since graduated to plane spotting, as you might guess from his twitter avatar.

Gia's felt her definition was a little less narrow: "it's just being obsessed with anything". Gia also had one of the best answers we've heard to the "who's your favourite geek" question: Ben Folds. She said she feel in love with his music but he also made feel ok about being a geek.

Here's another shot of one of their cats, this time exploring the props. We know what you internet people like.

This was also the second shoot where everyone got very excited by the Guardian's microphone (again, joining us to record some interviews), and also yet another shoot to include a bit of a geek-out over cameras. Though Aleks and Greg's camera-off last week made an awesome image, Brian and Greg's discussion of charge, vibration and collection of dust in their cameras has to have been the geekiest. Even the cat talk turned into discussion of enzymes, as the man from the Guardian told us if you put a Siamese in the fridge, it goes black (NB: He hadn't actually tried this, and wouldn't suggest you do either. Please be nice to your cats).

We'll finish with a shot of one of Gia's shoes. She knew they wouldn't be in the calendar photos, but wanted the outfit to be complete anyway. A professional from head to toe, that Gia.

Shoot nine: Aleks Krotoski

Technology is obviously a big part of geek culture and plays a big part in bringing geek communities together. When we started planning Geek Calendar, this was one of the first areas we wanted to represent, and who better than Aleks Krotoski.

Dr Aleks Krotoski is a journalist and academic interested in technology and interactivity. Her recently completed PhD was on the impressively titled 'Social Influence in Second Life: Social Network and Social Psychological Processes in the Diffusion of Belief and Behaviour on the Web' and she is currently Researcher in Residence for the British Library's Growing Knowledge project.

On the media side, you may remember her from the classic gaming TV shows Bits and Thumb Bandits. Today you may have seen her on the recent BAFTA award-winning BBC documentary series, The Virtual Revolution, or heard her in her regular role as host of the Guardian Tech Weekly podcast.

(Fact: Aleks was also once named one of the Top Ten girl geeks by CNET, above Paris Hilton, but below Lisa Simpson).

Our idea for this shoot was to use somewhere tech-heavy, but related to Aleks's many professional roles. So what better (and convenient) place than The Guardian podcast studios?

Thanks to The Guardian's Alok Jha and Andy Duckworth, we gained access to one of the studios for an afternoon. For the record, the Guardian has about five audio recording studios, though sadly the big one where Tech Weekly is usually recorded was in use -- unfortunate, as we were looking forward to meeting its resident Sarah Palin ;)

Aleks carries a tremendous number of exciting gadgets with her: daily equipment includes her iPhone, Macbook and SLR camera, making for a good weight-lifting workout just carrying her handbag! But this all provided useful props for the shoot.

Our idea was to photograph Aleks surrounded by microphones and tech to capture her Tech Weekly role. We tried a few variations with different headphones and impersonations of Geordi La Forge and Minnie Mouse. This was her point of view.

Our other, crazy, idea was to show Aleks' 'wired' brandishing two interconnected iPhones and decorated with a variety of colourful cables borrowed from the Guardian's multimedia storeroom.

Yes, Jesus did cross our mind, an irony that was not lost on us when Aleks told us of her Catholic upbringing!

In-between shoots, we kept our subject fueled with Haribo and talked Twitter, iPhones (there were no less than five in the room at one point) and Dopplr.

We also discussed the mysterious lack of clocks on The Guardian's 'multimedia' floor and King's Place's terrible wifi (seriously, what's up with that?).

This was also the first Geek Calendar shoot for our other photographer, Greg Funnell, and he and Aleks bonded over their love of photography, SLR settings and who had the better camera. Who won? I think Greg (he does this for a living, after all ;) ).

In her video interview, Aleks named Simon Pegg (for geek favourite Spaced), Cory Doctorow ("the man so prolific he puts us other geeks to shame") and fellow Geek Calendar-er Ben Goldacre ("He has great hair") among her favourite geeks. I also liked her description of a geek as "someone who wasn't in the in-crowd when they were younger, but is now changing the world and making it a better place".

Aleks was a really good sport, going along with all our zany ideas, and it was a real pleasure to work with her. You can see more behind-the-scenes pics of the shoot on our Flickr page.

*UPDATED 19/7/2010 10.47. Corrected title and link to Aleks's PhD thesis.

Shoot eight: the multi-media one

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?).