Natural born killers

Well, not so natural. They're carefully bred to be hardcore fighting machines you'd think twice about playing fetch with. To see just how they're bred visit the website of the kennel these shots were taken at, feminists might be better to stay away...

This was an assignment that raised a few moral quandaries in the office, especially when we were trying to pick a shot for the cover. Taste won out over sensationalism and we went for the usual illustration. Read the story here. More up on the Executive site here.

He's in fashion....

No, I haven't bought a beret, taken to sporting scarves or adopted a mononym but the magazine is doing a big fashion supplement this month, hence the expensive model in expensive clothes, kindly lent by upcoming and established Lebanese designers. Abir was about 6ft tall to start with and in the skyscraper heels so we spent an afternoon feeling like dwarves. There was make up, stylists, people and everything. I had people to hold things. It was splendid. Dahling.

From leaf to lips

As part of a special report into the country's Tobacco industry, I got to take a look inside the factory that produces Lebanon's homegrown, homemade 'Cedars' cigarettes - photos of the whole production process can be found on the photo gallery page here.

Cheers Time, don't mind if I do

Sami Halabi, our deputy ed, was patient enough to sit for me while I tried my hardest to recreate a poor mans' version of Marco Grob's portrait of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, which was featured in the May issue of Time magazine. The lighting in it was awesome and there's no better way to learn than nicking tricks of those you admire.

Regular freelancer and drunken assailer of the Holiday Inn Nathaneal Massey was my guinea pig for the first attempt. The set up was all wrong but the shots came out kinda cool anyway.

Talking heads

A few head honchos from Lebanon's banking world gathered to listen to the above talking about banking stuff at a nice hotel. My attention got as far as the awesome steak rolls...

They yacked for ages, which meant a) I really needed those steak rolls by the end and, b) plenty of time to play with the lighting. Below is Yasser, Executive's editor in chief who was hosting the talk (i.e also capitalising on a journalist's innate ability to score great free grub).

Cars and canapes

Ladies, cars and canapes greeted visitors the Lebanon Motor Show 2010, the first in a few years, and the subject of the magazine's first ever online web gallery. This to be the first of many, which means more work fun for me. Hopefully the fruits of a trip to the south with UNIFIL will be used for the next one.

US invasion - Christian Science Monitor

This shot of former Los Angeles Laker C.J. Giles – now of Beirut's league topping Al-Riyadi – is to pop my US print cherry on April 12, with an appearance in Boston weekly CSM to accompany Josh Wood's piece on American basketball players in Lebanon. The keen-eyed will notice it's credited to NEWSCOM, rather than me. Bloody typical! Hopefully that little wrinkle will be ironed out before it hits the printer...