Earlier this year I was privileged to be asked to do the stills photography for a series of three events organised by Voices from Oxford.

Here is a selection of the images that I took at those events, created with Proshow Producer. The accompanying music is "The Swan" from The Carnival of the Animals by Saint-Saëns.

The lighting at all the venues is what I would describe as "challenging", mainly tungsten with contributions from the lights used by the video crew. I used my normal "event kit", which consists of two camera bodies, a Canon 5D Mkiii and a Canon 6D, and three lenses: 24-70 f2.8; 70-201 f2.8; and 90mm f1.2. The awesome light-gathering power of the f1.2 lens came in very handy, although I had to take great care that the focusing was spot on. The other essential piece of kit is my Gitzo carbon tripod. I never use flash during the formal presentations, for several reasons: often I'm too far away for it to be effective; it would kill the atmospheric lighting; and it would be unacceptably distracting for the speakers and the audience.

The complete video of Denis Noble's talk at the University of Oxford's Biochemistry Society can be seen here: http://www.voicesfromoxford.org/video/biochemistry-society-lecture/710. It is based around his latest book, Dance to the Tune of Life, which argues for a more integrated view of evolution, challenging the reductionist, gene-centric, Neo-Darwinian model.