Under the “Guylty Images” tab you can find all my photos that I have taken at various events. They are sorted into individual slideshows for each event under a separate heading. Additional notes under each heading.
All images here were taken by me. You are welcome to download them and use them for your own, non-commercial purposes. Please credit if you do so. If you have any questions regarding use or the photography itself, please don’t hesitate to get in touch!
Premiere of “Urban and the Shed Crew”, November 7th and 8th, 2015, Chapel FM and Hyde Park Picturehouse, Leeds
The double premiere in Leeds has been the best one yet in terms of the photographic loot. Mr A attended both events and graciously and patiently signed autographs and posed for selfies. At the events themselves he also spoke introductory words and took part in a Q&A. The best photos were taken outside where lighting conditions – for once – really lent themselves to photography. The photos from inside the venue are small and grainy due to shooting with incident light. I am including them, as ever, in order to complete the picture.
You can read about the event in my blog posts about the Chapel FM screening here and the Hyde Park Picturehouse screening here. A few notes on RA’s introduction at the Hyde Park screening are here.
World Premiere of “The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies”, December 1st, 2014, Leicester Square, London.
The edited full Armitage booty of the London green carpet. Again in fuzzy, out of focus goodness. This time the subject’s fault – he was too far away and did not deign to grace our fan cul-de-sac with his presence :-(. The images were shot with a 300mm zoom, hence the OOA my appear closer than he ever got *ggg*. Armitage was in my field of vision for about one minute.
There is a more detailed account in my post “The Hobbit BOTFA Premiere – Part 2 Hat-trick” . The whole event has been described in a series of posts: Part 1 – the general event, Part 3 – Benedict Cumberbatch,
European Premiere of “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug”, December 9th, 2013, Sony Center.
The unedited, full A___ booty of the Berlin red carpet. In all its fuzzy, out of focus goodness. I apologize for the lack of quality. Not the subject’s fault. I was slightly distracted…
Images are in chronological order and chronicle the exact seven minutes and ten seconds (!) it took RA to pass through my line of vision (from 18:31:16 until 18:38:26 – yeehah for EXIF data). You will get an idea of the buzz and excitement on the fan-side of the red carpet, but also of the hard work and patience on the other side, and the good grace with which all the demands for photos and autographs were met. The images prove that Mr A is indeed loved by the camera – no derps whatsoever!
For more detailed accounts of the experience you can read my initial report “Live-*ooof*ing for the Fandom” on me+richard and my timeline of the whole event “A Day in the Life of a Fangirl” on this blog.
All images © Guylty Pleasure. Please do not use without permission.
Guylty Pleasure 
I saw something fine! Thank you, thank you. It makes me feel almost like I was there. Loved the chronological order. You have some great shots of our lovely man. I’m smiling now! Can I reblog this?
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I am so sorry. I really feel like I am flogging a dead horse and trying to hog attention or something.
But yeah, reblog away.
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Oh please don’t feel that way. I think everyone should see your slide show!
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Cheers, treehouse – you are the one who tipped me over the edge in that regard 😉 So I blame you!
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I will happily take the blame 😉
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I enjoyed seeing Richard *within* the crowd and not just focused solely on him. I’ve never been to events of these kind so I appreciate seeing “the whole picture” 🙂
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Yes, it’s kind of interesting to see the chronology of such an event from the fan’s perspective. Watching that slideshow takes almost as long as the whole experience lasted. (Ok, well, it took a bit longer) It does relay the POV of standing in the fancrowd.
Also – you get to see the un-edited images – all the crap shots that were out of focus, the ones that were framed wrong, the ones where he moved too fast for me and I got only a blurry shot.
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Thanks so much for posting these! I know from other conversations that you weren’t happy with the results from a technical perspective, but the give so much depth to the context of the event, I particularly like the sequence (about 2/3 through, still very close) where RA looks to be listening, then reacting to something someone said to him.
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Yes, there is almost a stop motion photography effect to it. You can see him interacting, moving on – Later he is given a rose by a fan, he passes it on to his assistant, he turns back, he listens, he hands over the hobbit coin (not sure who received that). On the other side of the red carpet you can see him patiently posing with a fan.
Putting the pics into a slide show yesterday transported me right back into the event. I almost felt the buzz (especially when that fuzzy gaze hit me right through the lens *haha*).
Thanks for your encouragement! x
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Thanks so much for sharing this with us, my remembrance to that event is still blurred and vague, but that slideshow brought it all back to me, was it really that long, more than seven minutes ): ?
The fuzzy gaze is my special favourite one, and though you got it through your lens, you got it!!!
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“That long”???? That *short*!!! Remember – I am including the shots where he’s way off. You guys couldn’t even see him from below.
I tell you, the fuzzy gaze one hit me like lightning. The work mode was momentarily but acutely broken when that happened!!!
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Hihihih, for me it was just a glimpse of an eye. Remember, I didn´t stand behind you on that bench because I had to check against my silly boring-accountant-list: height? check!, blue eyes? check!, nose? check!, hands? check!, voice? check!, arsitage? see guylty-pleasure… And I had to hold up that f*** sign you made, that is now hanging on my bedroom-wall and is presented to some visitors being worth looking at it 🙂
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You were definitely closer up and had a different perspective on RA – including the “make-up” which I cannot make out on my pictures at all.
Hihi, my sign on your bedroom wall? Now, be careful, that could be off-putting to *some* bedroom visitors *winks*
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Well done, Guylty!! Love it!! Such great shots. Really illustrates the event! Aww he’s so wonderful!! Thanks for this!! 😀
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Even my shitty photographs couldn’t obscure his royal gorgeousness 😉 thanks Marie!
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Thank you! The pics do a great job in conveying the atmosphere, not to mention the gorgeousness. No wonder you’re feeling all fuzzy-gazey again. 🙂
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I think I am experiencing an overdose right now. Must step back. I think I need a break.
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I’m so glad you loaded these — technical quibbles here or there they give a much fuller sense of what this experience might have been like. thanks for doing it.
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Yup. The technicalities still grate with me. Arrrgh. But I find the slideshow as a whole really quite interesting, almost like a short film. My initial reaction (voiced elsewhere) was that I would really like to repeat the exercise – and focus on the fan side of things. That could be a very interesting project of its own. Something to investigate and get my teeth in.
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That is my intention, too. You know, the “Ruhrfestpiele”, one of Europes famous theatre and arts festival is held next to my hometown. In 2012 Cate Blanchett attended, this year Sir Michael Gambon is invited (have to book my ticket soon).
So I´ve decided to write a letter to the intendant of the festival to invite Mr. A. for next year. Any good ideas… I`m still struggling with the arguments…
If it ever happens, I´ll be your faithful slave carrying Marky Mark´s heavy equipment and watching you putting your teeths in Mr. A 🙂
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LOL – getting my teeth into Mr A? Poor man. (Or me? An dem werde ich mir wohl eher die Zähne ausbeißen, wie man so schön sagt…) And I *always* need someone to carry the tripod and the lens bag 🙂
Nice one re. Ruhrfestspiele. I think RA’s oeuvre speaks for itself. Mind you, I just suspect he is a little too unknown in Germany to be invited…
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Something I feel very strongly after seeing these, which I didn’t get from the earlier shots you shared (and the many similar, if not quite as good, pictures from other fans who were there), is that Armitage is simply a single, slightly taller man in a very large place moving through a huge crowd of humans, each of whom is focused on something different, and many of them not even on him. In some of these shots, he could equally well be standing in the Weichnachtsmarkt on the Französischer Platz, looking around in a bit of bewilderment, or saying hello quietly to someone he met. While I knew this about the atmosphere from common sense, the pictures are a thought-provoking contrast to what I’d mostly been viewing up till now. I think the shots of him and even the “fan selfies” reflect the fan perspective on the event, in which he’s the center of their attention at least for that moment, the thing they most want to see (and as he’s the thing i most want to see, too, I adopt, and intensify, that perspective as viewer, when I assign my own reactions and thoughts to the picture). He’s the whole world from that perspective, and he takes up the whole picture. Not so here.
Something I’ve been thinking in light of certain discussions occurring elsewhere lately is that it would be ridiculous for him to do anything other than exactly what his security people say in a setting like this. He really can’t change the terms of the encounter as he did in NYC — not only because it would be risky behavior on his part, but simply because he’s such a tiny piece of the whole thing. I know conceptually that he’s a sort of cog in a particular kind of machine, but these pictures make that — and the spatial boundaries in which the machine is operating — a great deal clearer. Thinking about it from Armitage’s perspective, even if you know you’re physically safe, surrounded by security people, and you have fences keeping space around you, it must be ridiculously overwhelming. Even more remarkable his capacity to concentrate on what’s happening right in front of him during a fan encounter as opposed to being hopelessly distracted by the whole spectacle.
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Yes to your observation of “slightly taller guy in a mass of people”. Due to shooting at a large aperture (resulting in the blurred out background) and the initial close cropping of Richard you don’t even see the amount of people who are on the other side of the divide. In this case there was a constant stream of invited guests walking by behind him. A number of security suits surrounded him (at least two, if not more), plus a red carpet hostess and two further female companions (publicist? assistant?). The circle of trust??? *haha*
Your interpretation of the situation is quite right – a cog in a machine. Or I described him as an object on an assembly line, moved forwards without stopping. How much and how well the red carpet celebs hone in on the individual fan, I am not sure – it seemed like a fairly automatic process to me, in which they responded to the autograph and photo requests, politely accepting compliments and greetings. And moving on…
I think a lot of praise needs to be given to the assistants/publicists who actually observe very closely what is going on. There were several instances where they made sure that a celeb who had been called away (say to the other side of the red carpet) came back to where he had left off. They kept in the background, very inobtrusive, leaving the interaction up to the celebs and the fans, but smiling and observing attentively. (Personally, I felt slightly intimidated and put off by the security people – who looked quite grumpy for the most part.)
This might be an unpopular opinion, but I felt, however, that the celebs are “trained monkeys” when it comes to interaction with the red carpet public. They are media and publicity savvy (by necessity), and know what is expected of them. In my elevated position above the heads of the fans in front of me, I was hard to ignore, but I was nonetheless very surprised how many of the celebs noticed me and reacted by stopping and posing so I could take a picture of them. (Pics of Cumberbatch, Adam Brown and RA are the only ones that came out – I missed some others.) This tells me that a) they have been told/taught to do so and b) they have possibly also learnt to spot pro photographers (who you can tell apart from the rest of the crowd by where they position themselves, what hardware they use and how they shoot – and yes, all of that is discernible within a split second if you have been told what to register).
As for what that must be like for the celebs – I am sure they find the situation as weird as I did. I described it as a zoo, with them as the exotic animals and the fans as the zoo visitors. Unless you are absolutely revelling in such undistracted attention from a large crowd, it must not only be overwhelming but actually something that you can only negotiate if you switch on auto-pilot: One step right – spot autograph book – sign autograph book – smile for camera – listen to fan greeting – nod and smile – brief answer – spot next autograph book – step right – take autograph book – sign – listen – nod – smile – step – grab – sign – smile – nod – step. Ad infinitum et ad nauseam.
BTW – no slur on fans who make the effort to be at the red carpet. I am one of them. There is nothing wrong with it, and it was great fun, too. But it is still a situation of controlled interaction and also celebrity cult.
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If ever go to one of these, I’ll borrow a really big camera to carry in front of me. Won’t shoot any pictures, will just use the camera to attract the attention 🙂
You did a great job.
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Hahaha, good idea. But good luck with that! I, for one, would never let marky Mark (my precious took) out of my sight *ggg*.
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maybe i can build a mockup, one that’s not so heavy 🙂
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This is the 1st chance I’ve had to look at these. HMOTG…
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*ggg* The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth… Unrefined and unedited. (Except for leaving out all the other irrelevant celebs ;-))
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Pingback: me + Richard Armitage fan selfies: musings on self, presence, and the proximity question [a bit on evidence] | Me + Richard Armitage
I’ve finally caught up with these courtesy of Serv’s link! Thank you for posting them, it certainly gives me a better understanding of how you saw his interaction with the fans unfold. Makes me feel as though I was there. From a strictly non-pro’s POV they are fabulous shots….yes, even the blurry ones, because it was seeing him through your eyes. I especially like the ones where his head is slightly down, so that we can see the waves in his hair and those gorgeous eyelashes and crinkles of his. *sigh*
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Ruhrfestspiele!!!!!!
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If I were you, my heart would probably be beating so hard, and my fingers shaking, that I might not be able to take any photographs. Did you want to jump through the crowd and kiss him? What a temptation!
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Hehe, no, I was too busy with the photography than to drool. It all passed me by in a blur. And in a way I was grateful. Meeting him could never be good…
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Guylty, your black and white photo of him looking down to sign an autograph is one of my favorite RA captures. He looked devastatingly handsome in Berlin. His is the gift that keeps on giving. How blessed are we to bear witness to kindness, creative integrity, talent, and professionalism in such a gorgeous package!
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Aw, thanks, Mia 🙂 If you have read through my blog you probably know that I am overly critical of my own picture… I don’t think it does him justice, quite, because as you said – he was devastatingly handsome in Berlin…
BTW, I just relived that moment last weekend when I happened to walk past the exact spot where that photo was made. A good memory, despite my initial niggles.
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