JAMES BOND – Skyfall Premiere at Royal Albert Hall

Preparations began in London early on Tuesday 23rd October – ready for the World Premiere of the latest James Bond film – Skyfall.

The premiere was being shown at The Royal Albert Hall within the huge dome-shaped structure with the whole surrounding area being taken over for the the guests arriving at the event.
Hundreds of workers worked throughout the day erecting fencing, setting up lights and most importantly securing the huge golden 007 numbers in place.







Across the whole City of London Bond-fever had taken over with nearly every London bus sporting a 007 advert along with Harrods featuring James Bond in every window display. The iMax cinema featured a 360 degree advert for Skyfall too.



The official red-carpet event began at 5pm with thousands of people turning up to watch the evenings events unfold.
David Walliams and Kate Silverton were hosts for the night and began by recording many different introductions for various television stations around the world.




Hundreds of security staff and policemen were on duty to ensure only people with tickets could attend the red-carpet event and ensure that the many thousands of people that wanted to watch the guests arrive could do it safely.

There was only a small public viewing area and this had already filled up by 5pm – let’s just say it was very cosy and I apologise to the people infront of me whom I ended up balancing my arms and zoom lens on! (I had no choice!)
And so I chose my position and that’s where I was stuck for the next two hours along with many other thousands of like minded people (all armed with cameras!)

As you can see there wasn’t much room left on the pavements for anymore people so students were taking to the windows, balconies and even on rooftops to get that all important view.
Some foreign students even created some Bond-esque banners too!

And taking us all by surprise – the first vehicle pulled up to a crowd of frenzied photograph taking. No-one particularly knew who it was but as everyone else was taking photographs everyone else just joined in so much so that you couldn’t actually see enough to focus and recognise if it was anyone famous. (those flashes were bright!)

Once the camera flashes had died down it became apparent that the first guest was James Bond himself – Daniel Craig! (and rightly so!) It also became apparent that this was a choice spot as all vehicles were stopping and revealing their guests right in front of us!




Amongst a frenzied crowd, an unbelievable amount of camera flashes, amount of arms and cameras in the way – it was incredibly hard to actually get a decent photograph at all! They were either blurred, overexposed, soft, noisy or people walking in the way of the celebs. This was certainly going to be a challenge!
So these few photos below were about as good as it got!

Daniel Craig spent the longest time signing photographs for the excited crowd and was the only person whom came over to our side and got within a meter of us. I think I was a bit slow on the shutter button but captured some video of him instead!

During the next two hours loads more vehicles arrived thick and fast featuring a combination of actors from past and present James Bond films complete with other celebrities from tv and music. (And a load of people whom no-one had any idea about!)

Can you name any of the celebrities that I have captured?






Various James Bond theme tunes were played over the PA system to entertain the crowds between arrivals with search lights and large monitors displaying live coverage of the arrivals too.
A steady stream of non-celebrities, whom had paid over £1000 per ticket, made their way via another entrance onto the red carpeted area.









Can you see all those people lined up on top of that building on the right?!?!

You can view the full 200 photos in the set by visiting the link below or by pressing play on the slideshow.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/djleekee/sets/72157631841819145/