If you’ve been on our homepage this week, you may have noticed our new banner, which illustrates our competitive advantage message. If you’re interested in how the image of Frank and his giant prize winning marrow was created, here’s the photographer Stephen Shepherd’s account:

“I had to source a giant marrow, so instead of getting a model maker to mock something up, I went to the Royal Bath and West show. They have a giant vegetable competition, where I managed to talk to the winner of the Giant Marrow category. He’d grown it purely for the show and was more than happy to sell it.

At this size they are not good for eating and this way he didn’t have to worry about transportation and disposal.

Because the marrow has very heavy, we had to lighten it up a bit by cutting a large section from the back and hollow it out, so what you see in the picture is a prize winning, giant marrow shell.

My feeling is that although hollow, it still looks heavy. A light polystyrene model (and I have seen them) just doesn’t look right because the human model finds it hard to make us believe the object is heavy and real.”

I especially like the glint in Frank’s eye! He certainly knows something we don’t, and that’s his competitive advantage.

To find out more about Stephen’s work, please visit his photographer’s website.

Erik Johansson from Sweden creates these incredible images by digitally modifying photographs that he took himself. Some great examples of what can be done with carefully composed photographs, Photoshop and a lot of imagination. I particularly like the ones that are in real life ‘normal’ settings. My favourite is the ‘punching your own face’ one.

Read this interview with Erik