Emmy Awards, Satellites and Sirs | Surrey Universities 'Wonder Talks'

This past weekend I had the honour to shoot and meet some beyond accomplished talents and also listen during filming a Ted talks style series at Surrey Universities 50th anniversary, 'Wonder Talks'.

Two of the men I got to meet who stood out were Sir Martin Sweeting and Michael Price.

To begin, Michael Price won an emmy in 2014 for his work as a composer on the Sherlock BBC program. He spent his presentation speaking about growing up with no music in his family, without much luxury in life and how important he feels art is, particularly music, in the classroom from a young age. He felt fortunate to be given music at school and finding his passion from being brought up in a family without a musical background or much understanding of being an artist for a career. The highlight though was when he was unveiling a shrouded 'something' hidden which turned out to be a golden Trumpet. The joke came to an applause when he said the trumpet was his start, but this was what he came to speak about- just before surprising the audience with his actual Emmy award from beneath his speaking stand.

Afterwards, I got to meet my first 'Sir', Sir Martin Sweeting. This mans career and life has been absolutely incredible, especially to me with my love of the universe and thoughts about humans approach to finding answers. Sir Martin is a pioneer in photographic satellites who grew up with a dream to see the earth from space. However, being a realistic man, he saw the odds being stacked against him and so he thought of the next best thing- and in ways even more exciting. Creating a machine on his own to launch into space to take photographs of our planet, and he did just that. He's launched nearly 50 satellites into orbit and contributed further to some incredible work in farming planning from space and natural disaster relief work, all from using his satellites. My favourite part of his speech was when he made a joke about if anyone had ever left their lens cap on their camera when going to take a photo (guilty) and now imagining the lens cap left on a multi million dollar satellite on the back of a 100m+ rocket! After the show upon greeting him and speaking with him the dork in me had to do it... to get a photo of him with his satellite lens cap attempting to put it onto my cinema camera, that is! This was a moment I'll never forget. A sir, the pioneer of photographic sattelites- putting his lens cap on my camera.

After the show I imagined early humans gazing at the sky to the moment in 1982 when he got his first photograph BACK at those looking up. Thats the sort of excitement of a lifetime, and a worthy accomplishment of wonder indeed.

Below are some behind the scenes photographs from the day including me with Michael and his Emmy (Which I only half held to keep the excitement alive if I ever win my own- haha) and of course the photograph of Sir Martin Sweeting putting his lens cap on my camera. This day was why I love human curiosity, and furthermore my career which takes me to places and world class peoples lives around the world.

Art, today then, won.