Hello . u--7

2010-09-29T15:46:00.001+01:00

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b--b

2006-11-26T13:47:00.000Z

As you may have noticed, i am on a bit of a hiatus from blogging at the moment. The problem i have is that when interesting stuff happens i often can't blog about it for commercial reasons, and when nothing interesting is happening there's nothing to blog about. I may return at some point but for now i'm going to officially give it a rest for a bit rather than just feel guilty about not blogging all the time.
If you want to keep up to date on what we're up to Monster posts about five times a day on her excellent blog (link to the right) so have a look there.

see ya...

2006-11-01T22:15:00.000Z

On monday i had another shoot in Cardiff, so monster and i stayed over for the weekend in Bristol with the wonderful Lizzie Everard. We had a fantastic time:

...and then on Monday morning headed on to cardiff at 7:30am, shot through the day and into the evening, and then got back home to London at about 2am the next morning. I then had to get up again at 7:30 to take the hired gear back to Calumet, so i then spent most of tuesday in a fog of tiredness. On tuesday i managed to source a load of props;

for the shoot with Lamb of God, which took most of the day, then i got a call in the evening that the shoot had been cancelled, which was frustrating but also a relief to then have today free to sort things out and do all the things that pile up when you're out shooting a lot. It's been nice to have today, almost as a surprise gift, and i've been trying to sort out all the gear and rubbish that seems to be piling up in every room of the house.

I was hoping to put up a couple of pictures, but blogger won't let me. Hopefully i'll be able to tomorrow.

2006-10-23T10:08:00.000+01:00

Here we go, lots of Torchwood pics from the papers and tv guides:

2006-10-21T15:47:00.000+01:00

Tai chi was... interesting. It definitely seems to be something that you have to learn gradually, so Monster and I were a bit lost trying to follow what everyone was doing, but even so there were times where i thought i could see how it was working my body and that i could even enjoy it. However, these were outweighed by the times when it just felt boring, or a bit 'let the energy flow through you' new age or 'wax on, wax off' martial arts mysterious, though to be fair i think this was more the teacher than the subject. On balance i think i'll stick with weights and cardio, but it was interesting to try something new and different, and to have the option of going back if i change my mind.

2006-10-21T08:18:00.000+01:00

Lots more Torchwood stuff in the press at the moment, which i'll take pictures of and post later today. On thursday Monster and I finally joined a gym, which we've wanted to do for ages and can now afford. We went in yesterday for an induction session and now have a plan each to do when we go. It'll be nice to tone up a bit and not just sit around being fat, but it does all seem like an awful lot of work...

As Monster is using her G5 more and more I have bought a 20" Dell flat screen monitor to hook up to my laptop so that i can use it as a desktop machine for retouching. It looks great, and is £200 cheaper than the apple equivalent, so i'm very happy with it.

We're off to Tai Chi at the gym in a minute, should be interesting as i've never done it before and don't know what to expect, then a day of sorting out the chaotic council tip that the house has become while we've been busily working. Fun fun fun...

2006-10-19T08:58:00.000+01:00

Checking out the official Torchwood site, i found a selection of my shots of the characters available as desktop wallpapers to download from the site. Just go to one of the workstations, then click on GALLERY, then on where it says to click for desktop downloads.

As i said recently i never post pictures on here that haven't already been published by the client, as that would spoil their carefully guarded exclusivity. Now that the Torchwood pics are out it means i can start getting them up on my website which is great.

Better get on with that then...

2006-10-17T09:43:00.000+01:00

As i've been so busy over the last few weeks i haven't posted any recently published work, so here's a whole load of stuff from the last couple of months:

AFI in rock sound:

My Chemical Romance also in Rock Sound(just a straight studio shot as a taster of the shoot i've spent the last two days placing into a cg environment; out next month):

God Forbid, picnicking in the apocalypse in Rock Sound:

Cradle Of Filth in Terrorizer:

And an ad for the upcoming Bullet for My Valentine live DVD, featuring my photo:

Torchwoodwise, so far there's just the bus posters, a couple of shots in Dr Who magazine:

and a a couple in the Sunday Times Culture magazine:

Over the next couple of weeks i have a couple of big shoots that i can't talk about yet, one with the band Lamb of God in Birmingham (for the Christmas edition of Terrorizer, the mind boggles) and hopefully time for lots of promotion in time to capitalise on the high profile of Torchwood...

2006-10-11T10:42:00.000+01:00

Finally, after weeks of waiting, my Torchwood posters are out and on buses all over the place! It's great to finally see them in print, and soon people will actually know what i'm talking about when i tell them what i've been working on so much recently.

Also...

Just had a slightly confusing (until i worked it out) phone call from a girl telling me she'd seen my ad on the net and was really keen to work for me and had emailed a CV etc.

Eh?

Turned out she had found an ad at gumtree.com, a listings website, saying this:

"A leading London-based Photographic Press Agency has an opening for a part-time photographer's assistant/technician to assist a well-known celebrity photographer with "on location" editing and transmission of digital images.

Candidates will be confident in manner and fully conversant with current image management systems, Photoshop, Windows, wi-fi and other transmission systems. Must be able to work quickly under pressure and to tight deadlines. A knowledge of, and genuine interest in, the current UK celebrity scene is essential, and familiarity with US celebrities would be an asset. Must be able to commit to working 2 – 3 evenings per week until late, mostly in central London with the possibility of occasional overseas travel.

Please e-mail Steve Brown (click Reply To link above)"

Needless to say it's not me, although if she was good at everything mentioned in the ad she could be useful to have around! Wonder if she'd work for free...

I hope she gets the job though, whoever it's with. She seemed very nice.

2006-10-05T09:32:00.000+01:00

Lat night i got my new, corporate website up and running, www.steveco.co.uk. It's still a work in progress, and is only really of interest to potential corporate/advertising clients anyway, but it's good to have an online portfolio that won't scare off all the more conservative clients with images of scary death metal bands gurning into the lens.

I also added Lostprophets, AFI and God Forbid images to www.stevebrownphoto.co.uk, so do go and feast oyour eyes on those too. I'll putting them in my online print shop too asap.

2006-10-04T15:18:00.000+01:00

This animated short film, 'What Barry Says' by Simon Robson, is awesome. The synopsis reads

"Barry is a friend of mine, who to put it mildly, is an astute political thinker. He's also an old hippy and therefore a 'right' lefty. Many times we'd be sat in our local pub and I'd be there, totally captivated by Barry and his knowledge and opinions on his area of speciality: US foreign policy."

and that's basically what it is, a three minute exposition by Barry on US foreign policy, accompanied by the most fantastic visuals ever, an animated visual interpretation of his ideas in the style of Soviet Social Realist propaganda posters.

A+

Today I am updating my music website and also creating a new one, to showcase my more 'normal' corporate stuff. Bread 'n' butter innit?

10 minutes later...

This one's pretty fantastic too.

2006-10-03T17:32:00.000+01:00

As i've been bbc-ing so much recently it's meant that a) i've had no time to blog, and b) I've had nothing to blog about cos i've just been working.
However, today was my first day off from that for ages, so i took the advantage of finally doing a couple of tests for a possible shoot for a tattoo magazine. It's based o the theme of ink, and would be shoot with tattooed models, but these are my first 'sketches'.

2006-09-25T22:04:00.000+01:00

Just completed my Self Assessment Tax Return online and submitted it. Ah well, there goes my T0rchwood money before i even got a chance to plan spending it. I guess you can't miss what you've never had...

On a happier note, there's an interview with me online at Delirio.net. It's in Italian and English so just scroll down to your preferred version.

Also, I've been working LOADS, particularly at the Beeb doing retouching, recently, which has meant that i've not been able to get on and get recent shoots online. However, I'm hoping to get shots of Lostprophets, AFI, God Forbid and Nick Oliveri up on my website, and hopefully in my print shop, in the next few days or so, so i'll keep you posted.

2006-09-23T12:13:00.000+01:00

Just came across these two great poems by Neil Gaiman, the author, among much else, of the Sandman series of graphic novels:

POEM

I am continually disappointed by nudity
decently covered breasts could look like anything when revealed,
the nipples might be eyes or snake heads or flowers glowing gold,
they might be anything, but never are.
And as for the rest of it, the whole between-the-legs business,
when I was a boy, and simply wondered about women, why back then
it was the mystery of mysteries,
and now, grown up
I still think,
I wonder what she keeps hidden,down there, beneath that cloth,
imagining miracles and mysteries and dreams
conjuring secret mouths and lips that smile and sing
craving petals, tentacles and stars,
desiring the unimaginable.
The reality of nakedness
makes me mutter Jesus Christ with delight and awe as well, of course,
but still, the revelation is in its way prosaic.
Just another gentle biped with bumps and flesh and cleft and hair,
always looking just
a little bit more awkward and less interesting
than when she wore clothes.

THE DAY THE SAUCERS CAME

That day, the saucers landed. Hundreds of them, golden,
Silent, coming down from the sky like great snowflakes,
And the people of Earth stood and stared as they descended,
Waiting, dry-mouthed to find what waited inside for us
And none of us knowing if we would be here tomorrow
But you didn't notice it because

That day, the day the saucers came, by some coincidence,
Was the day that the graves gave up their dead
And the zombies pushed up through soft earth
or erupted, shambling and dull-eyed, unstoppable,
Came towards us, the living, and we screamed and ran,
But you did not notice this because

On the saucer day, which was the zombie day, it was
Ragnarok also, and the television screens showed us
A ship built of dead-man's nails, a serpent, a wolf,
All bigger than the mind could hold, and the cameraman could
Not get far enough away, and then the Gods came out
But you did not see them coming because

On the saucer-zombie-battling gods day the floodgates broke
And each of us was engulfed by genies and sprites
Offering us wishes and wonders and eternities
And charm and cleverness and true brave hearts and pots of gold
While giants feefofummed across the land, and killer bees,
But you had no idea of any of this because

That day, the saucer day the zombie day
The Ragnarok and fairies day, the day the great winds came
And snows, and the cities turned to crystal, the day
All plants died, plastics dissolved, the day the
Computers turned, the screens telling us we would obey, the day
Angels, drunk and muddled, stumbled from the bars,
And all the bells of London were sounded, the day
Animals spoke to us in Assyrian, the Yeti day,
The fluttering capes and arrival of the Time Machine day,
You didn't notice any of this because
you were sitting in your room, not doing anything
not even reading, not really, just
looking at your telephone,
wondering if I was going to call.

Good eh?

2006-09-22T09:54:00.000+01:00

A couple of out-takes from yesterday. (Yep, it was a real skellington.)

2006-09-21T21:38:00.000+01:00

very tired.

I've been working at the BBC all week 10-6 filling in on the retouching desk (which was how i originally got to know the people who i did the T0rchwood stuff for) and then staying up late each night doing stuff that needed doing for other projects. Last night i got to bed after midnight, then was up at 7:30 this morning to burn DVDs and get ready for a shoot near Liverpool St. station for a program called Medical Mavericks, all about people who advanced medical science by experimenting on themselves (several of them died from their own experiments). The shoot was great, Monster came along as my assistant and the shoot was in an amazing old house which looked fantastic, and the presenter who i was shooting was very easy to work with. We shot for half an hour then strolled along to Brick Lane for a delicious curry before coming back and doing some more shots, then went straight across to the Beeb and worked there retouching until nearly 8pm.

Tomorrow i'm at home so i'll have a chance to catch up on a few things and chase up some stray invoices.

2006-09-18T23:10:00.000+01:00

Monster and I are turning into Tom and Barbara Good. After getting home from a day retouching at the beeb, I soaked a load of home grown tomatoes in hot water to get the skins off, which Monster then (also using our home grown chillis) made into tomato sauce (for pasta and home made pizzas) ready to freeze alongside the butternut squash soup and (home grown) marrow soup we made and froze over the weekend. Then i baked some wholemeal bread.

I also made Monster a portfolio case over the weekend. It was a dual effort as Monster helped with the design, and i then sewed it.

I am reading a book at the moment called 'Living Better On Less', it is very inspiring.
Can you tell?

I've got a hankering for some chickens...

2006-09-15T19:34:00.000+01:00

A mainly good day today, as i finally sorted out a whole load of things that i'd been getting behind on. I posted off invoices and licenses, made prints for Cristina of Lacuna Coil and Rosie of Cradle of Filth and sent them off, tidied, hoovered, sent some pictures out to a couple of bands and generally cleared my To Do list.

I also got through a fantastic package of stuff in the post from Shannon at Sugarkitty's Stuff which will be great for the clothes and bags i have in mind for the near future.

The only bum note was learning that due to a corporate takeover of the chain, De Vere are giving me less days at one of their hotels than i was promised as payment for the work i did for them, and that there is no guarantee that the agency i have been doing it for will keep the contract to do the magazine. As the guaranteed (paid) work over the next year was one of the main reasons i did the work i did for less money (plus, supposedly, the days at the hotel) it is a bit frustrating that they can then just take that away with no warning.

Ah well, it's just another reminder to NEVER DO WORK FOR FREE. Jobs where you do them a favour by working for less money always end up being the ones that are the most trouble.

Other than that, as i say, a good and productive, and therefore satisfying day.

2006-09-14T14:13:00.000+01:00

Well.

T0rchwood is finished, Cradle of Filth is finished, PO numbers obtained and invoices full of money winging their way to my bank account. I feel almost at a loss now, but in a good way. I've got some more exciting projects coming up, and some bits of retouching work next week, so i guess i should just go for a coffee while i can.

:o)

2006-09-11T12:32:00.000+01:00

I'm retouching, I'm on the FINAL T0rchwood shot, and the computer has decided to show me what it would be like to use a ZX Spectrum for the job. Everything is SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO SLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW, and evrything i do takes 10 times the time it should. I could have finished a couple of hours ago and sent the shots off to the BBC if it wasn't for the dumb ass 'look at me, i've got 4MB of RAM' computer.

Grrrr.

2006-09-08T20:24:00.000+01:00

Yesterday's Cradle of Filth shoot, on the set as they were filming their new video, went really well. I wasn't sure how the band were going to be but they were all LOVELY, one of the friendliest, nicest bands i've shot. I got to the video shoot, in a barn near Huntingdon, a bit late, due to it taking me 45 mins to drive the half mile from the car hire place to my house to pick up my gear. I didn't reallise quite HOW bad the rush hour gridlock is, goodness knows how people do it everyday, you'd think they'd just get the bus.

Once i got there i set up a little al fresco studio outside the barn under a canopy, and shot all the band members except Danni (the singer) one by one against a five foot white background. I then had about a minute after lunch to shoot them all together on the set of the video, then had to wait around for AGES to shoot danni as he was doing video stuff.

I was fine with that (i'm used to it from working on TV stuff) and had a good long chat with Paul Harries from Kerrang! who was also there, but a German photographer who was also there spent the WHOLE day complaining and moaning and bugging Kirsten the lovely press officer from Roadrunner about when he was going to get to shoot the band, that he just completely pissed everyone off and lost any chance he might have had of shooting any roadrunner acts again. Diplomacy, friendliness and amiability are SUCH important skills for a photographer, you have to trust that you WILL get the shots in the end, and be assertive whilst never being unpleasant. I have a naturally zen-like personality which works well to this end, whereas some people just end up being stressed all the time and stressing out everyone around them.

Anyway, we eventually got to shoot Danni Filth too (like everyone else he was friendly, chatty and pleasant) and then i headed home, piked up monster, and took advantage of the hire car to take a trip to IKEA to buy some frames. Here's one with a signed copy of one of my Bullet For My Valentine shots in, the other two are for two of my rock Sound Posters.

Today was anotherr day of T0rchwood retouching, after dropping the car and my gear off this morning.

And tomorrow is....

Le Weekend!

2006-09-06T22:38:00.000+01:00

Had a nice meeting with a couple of the guys from Twin Fifty, a band I'm going to do some shots for based on these images by my pal Steve:

Also picked up some gear from calumet, and then tomorrow at 8am i'll be picking up a car (in North Finchley this time, so no need to drive up from Euston) to drive up to Huntingdon to shoot Cradle of Filth, lovely.

And my friend Kirsty, a professional pattern cutter, has offered to help me out with some sewing patterns, hurrah!

2006-09-06T12:44:00.000+01:00

Today i've been working on a poster to go on the side of buses, an interesting challenge due to the unusual shape, and nice to think that my work will be all over buses, bus shelters etc.

I'll keep you informed as to when they'll be out there in the real world.

2006-09-05T14:42:00.000+01:00

Last week we spent a few days up in Yorkshire with my parents, which was a fantastically relaxing break, then we launched ourselves back into the fray, coming back to lots of work (good) and lots of unpaid invoices to chase up and bad contracts to object to (bad).

On sunday we did one of our soulspace services, based on the Jar Of Life, Monster's version of which is:

I filmed slow motion footage of the rocks, pebbles, sand and water falling into the jar and projected it, which worked well, and we gave out jars for people to fill themselves.

I've also been busy on the sewing machine, knocking out a top and a skirt so far, and a pair of arm warmers which i'll post up sometime too. It's lots of fun and nice to do something creative that's non-photographic, and which produces something useful.

Had a good meeting at the BBC today about T0rchwood and other, linked stuff, all very exciting and hopefully will be able to reveal more later...

Now i have to spend a few hours computering for these T0rchwood shots, and sort out my Cradle Of Filth shoot on Thursday...

2006-08-28T20:57:00.000+01:00

Today i made a t-shirt

into a vest!

Not perfect, but not bad for a first foray into the world of making clothes. Think i'm ready to try a wedding dress now...

2006-08-26T13:35:00.000+01:00

Grrrrrrrr...

I signed an agreement on a shoot which turned out to be a 'works for hire' contract (evil, evil, rights grabbing american contract) disguised as something else. I am seeking legal advice and hopefull;y it'll be resolved quickly and painlessly, but it's a good lesson:

NEVER, NEVER, NEVER, SIGN A CONTRACT THAT YOU HAVEN'T READ THROUGH THOROUGHLY IN YOUR OWN TIME

rather than being pressured to sign it as everyone is walking out the door, and being told it's just a simple exclusivity agreement when it ISN'T.

Pah.

If you want to know more about Intellectual Property rights and copyright law, look at the Own-It site, i am seeking legal advice from them regarding this situation and they have loads of resources available to look at too.

I'll maybe blog about this more when i know more about what's going on, in the meantime i'm not going to be doing ANY work on the images under the terms of the contract they tricked me into signing.

2006-08-25T00:06:00.000+01:00

I got up at 7 this morning, went down to euston to pick up a hire car and some photo gear, drove 350 miles to Cardiff and back (with a shoot in the middle of course) with Monster as my glamorous assistant, and got back about 10pm. It's now just past midnight and I've almost finished my AFI shots, which have to be delivered tomorrow morning on the way to drop the hire car back, so i'll be up at 7 again.

Which is hard work, BUT, fantastic to be so busy and doing loads of shoots (shot My Chemical Romance again yesterday, who are a lovely bunch of guys) and we've got a few days off next week at my parents so i'll have chance to sleep and unwind then.

And of course i've now popped my 'driving in london' cherry, which means i am no longer afraid of it! It may be a non stop thrill ride of gut churning terror, but that doesn't mean it should stop me from doing it for jobs if necessary.

Time for bed zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

2006-08-19T22:11:00.000+01:00

As a fairly creative person who hates to be constricted to only one medium, i am always on the lookout for new ways of makin' stuff. I've always self repaired my aging, tattered clothes, and recently i've been getting all inspired by the DIY and 'reconstructed' clothing exploits of people like Shrinkle, Honeyshop 13, Mad Foxes and Angry Little Dead Girl, so today, still giddy at being above zero in my bank account, Monster and I went to buy a sewing machine, a Toyota 21 DES to be precise.
We have to wait a couple of days for it to be delivered, so in the meantime i have been having fun with fabric paint on a skirt i previously made for Monster. I'd post an image but posting images on Blogger seems to be crashing Safari just at the moment, so it'll have to wait for later. I do like the idea of unique, custom clothes though...

shoetastic

2006-08-18T19:33:00.000+01:00

Being the poor starving freelancer that i am, my poor old Duffs trainers were starting to look like the tattered rags of a street urchin,

so today we went to Camden to get some new trainers, giddy with the joys of having been paid for a couple of big jobs. I got some nice new DCs which, slightly oddly, seem to be made of black rubber;

and monster, never one to be outdone, bought an amazing but pleasingly cheap pair of Underground (very) hi-tops.

Oh, and we got a red chili (and lots of green ones which will hopefully turn red) on the chili plants on the window sill. And BOY is it spicy!

Back in the world of work I have been wearing my mouse fingers (the fingers that work the mouse, not my tiny, clawed, furry mouse fingers) to the bone doing my T0rchwood shots which are looking AWESOME and have got a really really good reaction from the people at the Beeb, which is cool. Now I've got to get those AFI shots sorted, and then next wednesday i'm shooting My Chemical Romance again, who, as you may remember, i shot just under a year ago for this shoot:

so it'll be nice to see them again.

2006-08-11T22:10:00.000+01:00

Hi, welcome to my new home.

You know the feeling you get at the very top of the first ascent of a rollercoaster, just before you plunge terrifyingly hundreds of feet straight down? That is almost exactly the feeling that you get when, having just stepped off a ten hour transatlantic flight and never having a) driven an automatic before, b) driven abroad before, or c) driven anything bigger than a renault clio before, you take to the wheel of your newly rented people carrier and nose it out onto the Las Vegas freeway system, frantically repeating the mantra in your head 'drive on the right, drive on the right.'

(This was the car i rented)

Las Vegas was great. Andy the journalist was really nice, also a christian, straight edge, and shared my delight at finding a colleague whose first impulse on arriving somewhere was NOT to head for the nearest 'titty bar' and the flight, and more surprisingly the drive to the hotel, passed without us dying in a flaming ball of wreckage.

(my room and the view from it)

The first thing that went wrong was that the shop we drove to to pick up our white background (who had told me on the phone that they would be open 'til six) closed at five, which didn't do us much good when we arrived at 5:15.

However, God came through in a big way for us (note to all magazine editors, employ Christians, when things go wrong we can call in the big guns) when a couple of wedding photographers that i got chatting to in the hotel gave us a spare background that they had, delivered it to the hotel for us, and didn't even charge us. Wow.

The shoot itself went fine, a forty minute shoot in a hotel room is always going to be a little anticlimactic when you've flown halfway around the world to do it, but the band were nice and all went smoothly. That morning i had got up at 5am (the joys of jetlag, you get so much more done!) and driven out into the mountains and to the Hoover Dam, which got me some good background shots and was a great little tourist trip too. Incidentally, this was the scene in the casino at FIVE THIRTY IN THE MORNING!:

and this is the Hoover Dam:

The next morning, having seen the band play the night before (they were really good, catch them if you can when they come to the UK) i was up at 7 to drive out to the aforementioned Valley of Fire. I didn't actually get there as i ran out of time before i had to set off back to check out of the hotel, but i saw some lovely desert and took loads more background shots so it was well worth it.

After a leisurely lunch we almost missed the plane back but got to the airport (after a rather tense drive trying to find the rental car drop off with half an hour till check in deadline) with 20mins to spare and enjoyed empty seats beside us on the way back, meaning room to stretch out and sleep.

Films watched on the plane:

Mission: Impossible III
16 Blocks
RV
V for Vendetta
Mainframe

The day after i got back i did a day's unit stills on Pulling, then the last couple of days have been devoted to a) catching up on the ludicrously small amount of sleep i got throughout the vegas trip and b) finally comping together all my T0rchwood shots, which are looking great and which Nice Kate at the BBC really likes. Sadly it was her last day there today. She was really nice and a pleasure to work for, hopefully the person who takes over T0rchwood from her will be as easy to deal with.

2006-08-04T21:42:00.000+01:00

Just about finished packing for Las Vegas, having spent the day organising for when i get there (hiring a car, picking up a paper backdrop, checking in for flight online, speaking to journalist who i'm going with, etc etc.) and doing some computer work for T0rchwood.
I'll be leaving at about 6:45 tomorrow, arriving in Vegas at 1:30pm. As we'll have a car to drive out into the desert and shoot some backdrops i'm hoping to get to see a bit of Nevada; we're hopefully going to go to the Valley Of Fire State Park and shoot some stuff there, and i've always wanted to see the Hoover Dam, depends how much time we have.

You can keep your casinos, i want to see the actual country.

2006-08-03T22:10:00.000+01:00

Well, Cardiff was a blast, though a bit more sleep would have been nice.

After driving up from London we got to Cardiff about 8:30pm and shot til midnight, then at 4am we headed out again to shoot in the pre-dawn and dawn light, this time with a big, black, heavily pimped monster of a car.

At 11am we met the manager of a 21 storey apertment building in the town centre, who took us up to the roof to take shots over the city, which looked amazing.

An apartment on the 21st floor, with a roof terrace, costs less per month than our flat in London. Pah.

The final stop was back to the studios to shoot the set, then back to Cardiff station to catch a train home.

2006-08-01T16:42:00.000+01:00

Spent most of today sorting out the admin that has been building up as I've been shooting alot. I've filled 8 DVDs with stuff as back ups and have also been putting a load of stuff onto my new 300GB external hard drive:

which arrived today. We thought we'd made a big mistake when we discovered it wasn't Mac compatible, but luckily it was just a case of using the disc utility program to format it for Mac and now it works perfectly. At least it will take the strain off my existing groaning-at-the-seams existing 300GB drive.

In other news:
Monster made a mini-me cut out of herself as a get well card for her nana, who is in hospital with a broken hip:

And we had loads of bird action over on the bird feeder:

2006-08-01T08:29:00.000+01:00

Leo Hickman, the Guardians ethical shopping columnist, on whether digital photography is more ethical than shooting on film. All i can say is that when i used to be on shoots using film, we would end up with a big bin liner full of plastic film wrappers, polaroid cases, polaroid backing oozing nasty caustic chemicals, and all sorts of rubbish. Now when i shoot digitally there is none of that, everything is reuseable.

2006-07-31T20:56:00.001+01:00

Got 1070 torchwood shots processed to jpeg and sent over to Kate at the BBC today. I had the images in two sets so as not to overface the computer, and set the first set off processing last night. When i woke up from a bad dream at 3:45am this morning i thought that as i was awake i might as well set the second set going, so at 3:50am this morning as you were all no doubt slumbering peacefully in your splendid four poster beds, i was sat in front of the computer, working.

Only for a few minutes though.

Also confirmed the last trip back to Cardiff this wednesday night. We're driving up, shooting in the dusk (not shooting ducks), then getting up REALLLLY early to shoot in the early early morning. Then back to bed for a couple of hours and off to shoot the set at lunchtime.

Also confirmed that Las Vegas with AFI is definitely on, no details yet but should be fun. I'll try and sleep on the plane out there this time, i was horribly horribly jetlagged last time i went to Vegas, and lay awake in my hotel bed for seven hours. I really want to try and take some shots out in the desert this time too, here's hoping...

Just watched Closer, a pointless, boring film about a load of people who all cheat on each other and deserve all the resulting unhappiness they get. Rubbish.

Made me feel glad for what i have though. :o)

2006-07-30T20:26:00.000+01:00

Just finished watching Lucky Number Slevin, easily the best film i've seen in a long time. Great set design, brilliant directing, excellent actors and an awesome script. Watch it.

Ok, last few days:

Wednesday;
went to a meeting at BBC Worldwide to talk about the suddenly-back-on Torchwood shoot on Friday. Discussed what Worldwide needed from the pictures (as opposed to Picture Publicity, who i'd dealt with up to then) and arranged to go up by train on thursday night, stay over, and shoot at 9:30 on friday morning (the only time the actors were free). Also decided that, as Worldwide (who deal with merchandise for the BBC, including posters) wanted as good an image quality as possible, I would hire a Canon 1DS Mk II, which has double the megapixels of my camera.

Thursday;
got up at 5am and was out of the door by 5:30. Got to Woolwich common by 7:30 to hook up with the crew of Pulling, a BBC3 comedy I shot for a couple of weeks ago and was doing another day of unit stills for. We spent the day in the charming N-Tice niteclub in Woolwich and then me and Jonathan, my assistant for the day, bailed out at 5:40pm, giving me plenty of time to get to Paddington for 7:00pm, meet Julian (my assistant for Cardiff) and Alex (from BBC worldwide) load the enormous amount of gear onto the train, sit back, relax and enjoy the journey.

Or so i thought.

In actual fact we had to wait for 20mins for a train from Woolwich, meaning that i had to then RUN across London, or at least the bits between tube trains. Running up LONG escalators with two heavy rucksacks, two stands in a stand bag and a large wheeled suitcase in your arms, on a hot day and with panic bubbling in your chest is not, perhaps, the best way to start a job.

I got to the platform at 7:12, we hurled the bags on board, the train set off, I changed my shirt (which i could actually wring sweat out of) for a dry t-shirt, we sat back, relaxed and enjoyed the journey.

We got to cardiff at about 9:30pm, checked intot the amazing hotel, and went for a nice Thai meal, before collapsing into bed at about midnight, a nice easy 19hr day.

The next morning i was up at 7:00 and enjoyed a hearty hotel breakfast (mini doughnuts, mmmmmm) before we headed off to the BBC Wales studios to set up the gear. We got set up and shot the actors for a pretty relentless three and a half hours. They were all very lovely and accomodating and i got everything i needed, which was a big relief. The sheer number of shots that needed to be remembered was intimidating (each actor from several fixed tripod positions, different costume changes, a number of pre-planned group shots etc etc) but i covered pretty much everything i'd wanted to.

In the taxi on the way back to Cardiff station i got a call from Rock Sound about a possible shoot next sunday of AFI, in Las Vegas. That'll be fun if it happens, fingers crossed...

Then got back to a well deserved hug with Monster at about 8pm.

And relax.

Saturday;
Having shot 16 gigabytes of images on Friday I conceded that i really did need another external hard drive, having filled my 300GB one, so we ordered a new one from amazon, for only £82! Flushed with success from that i decided that i really did need a new pair of jeans, as the pair that i have worn almost every day for the last year were actually starting to disintegrate. And what did i do? Yes, i went back to Gap and bought the same pair again. That's me sorted for the next year...

Sunday;
Went to church, chatted to friends, started processing all my 1200 RAW images to jpeg to send to Kate at the BBC to look through, and Monster cooked her chef's special; slow roasted lamb shanks in a wine gravy with veggies and mash, possibly the most sublime meal ever made.

Next week i'm heading back to Cardiff for the final time (for this job). We're going to get the train in the afternoon, shoot Cardiff through dusk and into the night, then get up at 4am to shoot in the daylit but deserted town, much like how they filmed 28 Days Later. Then we'll shoot the set later in the day and then head back to london. Then hopefully i'll be heading off to Vegas again Friday or Saturday.

It's almost like things are finally getting moving for me.

2006-07-25T21:26:00.000+01:00

So, bad news is; the possible band shoot on friday is off, which is a shame, although the good news is that this means i can go to Cardiff instead and shoot the rest of the actors for my T0rchwood shoot. This is great as a) i want to get more bits of it shot and start putting it together (this is The Fun Bit of a shoot, the bit where it all coalesces and i see how the final image is going to look) and b) if we don't shoot on Friday it could be another month before the film shooting schedule allows us to shoot them. It's all rather complicated by the fact that they want us to shoot at 9am, which means we either set off at 5am on the friday, or go up the night before. I'm hoping for 'go up the night before' but THIS is complicated by the fact that i'm shooting another day for the Pulling series on thursday and so i have to work out how early i can finish from that, head straight over to Victoria, meet my assistant with the gear and leap on a train to Cardiff, hopefully arriving before midnight.

It's tough being in demand... (although really it's just that you sit on your ass for a few days, then everybody wants you at once).

But YAY! Off to Cardiff, by hook or by crook.

2006-07-24T09:03:00.000+01:00

It seems that Monster is, after all, alkone in her freakish finger disability. My brother can do it:

His wife Louise can do it:

Even his friend Ben can do it:

Looks like i'll have to get some big jobs in so i can send monster to some kind of Swiss clinic...

Anyway.

Went up to Grantham on Saturday to photograph the head chef at a De Vere hotel up there. Bit of a long hot day but the pictures came out well and i enjoyed watching the lightning from Grantham station on the way back and then speeding through torrential rain on the train. This will be my last De Vere job for a couple of months; their magazine is quarterly and that's it for this issue, but i'll be back to trekking round the country in a couple of months when the next issue gets going.

Yesterday we went in to town with th lawson and sampled a couple of new coffee shops we hadn't been to before, including the one in Ray's Jazz, a jazz record store upstairs in Foyles bookshop. It has great coffee, a fantastic selection of non-coca cola company soft drinks (including Monster's beloved Fentimans) and FREE WI-FI, all of which puts it well ahead of all the nearby Starbucks' etc.

In a minute i'll be off to deliver the De Vere job, then i need to sort out gear and an assistant for another Pulling shoot on thursday and find out what's happening with a possible band shoot on Friday.

can you...

2006-07-20T22:50:00.000+01:00

bend your little fingers while keeping ll the others straight?

I can do it with ease:

yet Monster finds it physically impossible:

If you fancy sending me a photo of you doing it, or failing to do it, i'll post it up.

2006-07-19T23:14:00.000+01:00

So, went down to Rock Sound, delivered the pictures, went for a cold coffee-type drink with Monster and th Lawson, bid our tearful goodbyes to him and made our way to Camden where we walked along the canal to the London Zoo aviary, had a look at the birds, wandered back and had a look round Camden Lock and the new Stables market which is all very swish and new and cool, then back home for tea and Firefly series one on DVD.
A good, albeit sweaty day.

2006-07-19T11:32:00.000+01:00

My website's down at the moment, bandwidth problems again. I worked out that as the shop was just one big page, every time someone looked at it it uploaded loads and loads of pictures. So i've now upped my bandwidth allowance again and also redesigned the shop with a splash page linking to the different sets of prints available. Hopefully that'll solve the problem.

I'm off to Rock Sound in a few minutes, and am NOT looking forward to going out into the heat, specially that special, oozing heat on the tube. AH well, think of it as a free sauna, sweat out all those pesky toxins...

2006-07-18T22:57:00.000+01:00

Well, a couple of 14 hour days and a couple of 'skating dangerously on the edge of a full blown row' moments later Monster and I's The Automatic shots are just about done and ready to take in to Rock Sound tomorrow. The 'real people in a cartoon environment' theme was well outside both our creative comfort zones but that's the way i like it, pushing the boundaries of what i can do. Here's a sneaky peak:

It's going to print on saturday (hence the long hours to get it done i time) and so it'll be out in a couple of weeks, then i'll be able to show you properly.

in oxford

2006-07-16T20:36:00.000+01:00

There are fields, Neo, endless fields...

Also, Monster visited some temples while we there.

2006-07-16T19:30:00.000+01:00

Just got back from Oxford with a cracking headache/migraine - caused by dehydration/borderline sunstroke i think in Oxford on the shoot. REALLY hot there but the shots came out well i think.

bleugh...

2006-07-15T09:52:00.000+01:00

This is one of the shots from my recent Lostprophets shoot for Rock Sound. It's in the feature in the current issue and will be an A1 poster next month, which means that for three consecutive issues i'll have had the cover and an A1 poster in the mag, which is nice.

Tomorrow it's off to Oxford with Monster and Trevor, the journalist, to shoot The Automatic after which, as discussed below, Monster will do her illustrative magic and put them into a graphic novel style background. This is all to tie in with their CD artwork and logo which, if you have a look at the website, is all done in a cartoony style.

Today is THE WEEKEND! (Just a one day weekend this week but hey, we're freelance; every day is a weekend.) So we're off to town to sit in cafes and ponder the infinite.

see ya

2006-07-14T19:57:00.000+01:00

Also, out this week, is the new Rock Sound, featuring my cover and feature shots of the Lostprophets.

If i find the time i might take pictures of it and post them up, but as you might have gathered things are a little busy here at the moment and so really you'd be better off going out and buying the magazine, boost those circulation figures!

2006-07-14T19:46:00.000+01:00

Here's a test image that i did for the now confirmed shoot with The Automatic, which we're hoping to do in a graphic novel kinda style.

First i took a picture of Monster:

Then traced linework over it, filling in all the shadows to black:

Before filling in all the colours with flat blocks of colour and cutting monster out to place her in the scene:

I like it. Obviously it's just a quick test but i think particularly the shots with the band, and if we can find the right locations, could look awesome. Monster is going to do a lot of the final illustrating so it'll be much more sophisticated and controlled than my effort. I'm really excited about it...

2006-07-13T20:59:00.000+01:00

Having got back from our fantastically relaxing Brighton weekend on Sunday night it was go go go from the start this week.
On Monday I left the house at 7:30am so I could pick up my hire equipment before meeting BBCKate and J my assistant at 8:30 to drive to Cardiff to shoot one of the actors for T0rchw00d, prior to shooting the rest of the cast next week for all the promo shots for the series.
The shoot went well, although as i only had 25minutes it was pretty full on, and i got to recce the set for the headquarters, which looks AMAZING, and i walked through the TARDIS set too, which was fun. After the shoot we drove into Cardiff and recce'd the Millennium Centre, outside which we are going to do some shots, and then drove all the way back to london, getting home about 9:30pm.

There was no time for lie ins however, as the nextday i had to leave the house at 6:15 to get down to Battersea for 8:00am, to shoot unit stills and promo shots for a new comedy show called Pulling, these also went well and i got home at about
9:00pm. Thank goodness i would be able to have a lie in the next day!

Alas, it was not to be, as a courier was dispatched to pick up a disc of the Pulling files at 8:00am the next day. Once up, it didn't seem worth going back to bed so i spent the morning sorting out discs of images and associated invoices, dropped in for a brief torture session at the dentist, and then made my way into town to drop off discs at Blueprint (my recent De Vere hotels shoot in Bolton) and Rock Sound (a shoot of Nick Oliveri and an image for a poster of Lostprophets). Rather than just post or drop off the discs I met Penny at Blueprint and Al at Rock sound, and both meetings were very productive, with Penny introducing me to some new potential clients on another magazine and the Rock Sound publisher talking me through a plan to sell my images as mobile phone wallpaper, which doesn't look like it'll be a big earner, at least initially, but which like many 'new media' is definately worth being a part of at the start.
I got back from this epic trip just in time to drop off my bag before heading out again to meet the lovely Matt and Clare to go and watch the recording of a radio 4 comedy show pilot; a sports panel game called Just Like Watching Brazil, which was great fun and featured Clive Anderson and Andy Hamilton, both of whom are very funny.

Today I met up with Hannah, an aspiring music photographer who wanted to pick my brains about the business, before getting home to sort out endless invoices and plan my rapidly filling schedule over the next couple of weeks. Coming up i have:

A meeting about possibly shooting all the promo shots for the second series of Life On Mars

A trip to Lincolnshire to shoot a chef for De Vere magazine

A possible shoot with The Automatic, for the cover of next months Rock Sound

Two days in cardiff shooting for T0rchw00d

A shoot with Dave Marks' (the bassist i shot recently) band

A shoot with Devil sold His Soul

A live gig shoot for the Jezebel Sextet

and a couple more days shooting stuff for Pulling.

It's going to be a busy few weeks...

2006-07-09T20:47:00.000+01:00

yes, yes, it's becoming a weekly blog. I really will try harder soon. Think of it like the sunday papers, all the better for the wait.

Just back from a fantastic freebie weekend in a De Vere hotel (the Grand) in Brighton (payment for some shots i did for them a while back). We had an excellent time (pictures will follow shortly) and relished the chance to completely get away from work matters and associated stress. We also met up with Monster's friend Emm@ (off of t'internet) which was nice in a 'putting a face to a name' way (and a 'she's a lovely person' way too of course.
The first night, our room was about 30ºc with no way of cooling it down; a couple of fans made it just about possible to sleep, so the next day i summonned all my Posh Hotel Guest Assertiveness and got us upgraded to a better room for free, which was an excellent result.

I rule.

Brighton is the first place outside London that i've seen since moving to london that i think i could live in, and the commute for a couple of shoots a week wouldn't be too bad at all. There's also lots of punks, hippies, emo's, metalheads and general assorted riffraff, so we'd fit in with no trouble.

Tomorrow i'm off to Cardiff to do the first of three days of shoots for all the publicity posters etc for an upcoming BBC series you may have heard the name of: T0rchw00d (my L33T). This is all very exciting and so if you'll excuse me, i have to go and pack for it, no rest for the wikkid...

my life in pictures

2006-07-04T21:51:00.000+01:00

Sorry for the hiatus, it's been so hot i couldn't type. Luckily i could still operate a camera.

On saturday we went down to London Bridge and sat watching rollerbladers:

which inspired us to dig out our blades when we got home and bomb around victoria park, which was much fun.

On sunday we did a great soulspace service, involving a circle of salt and seven candles

a tree

and a big projection of a lazily spinning leaf wot i filmed.

These all referred to points and references in the service, including the letter to the seven churches from Revelation.

Yesterday i burnt an old cheque book of Monster's (can't let those identity thieves become monster and steal away her millions), which looked amazing. That was pretty much the high point of the day as the heat reduced me to a stupor and so i just lay around panting. Luckily, as a freelancer, i don't have to work on hot days, so i just sat around burning cheques, which is as close to burning money as i am likely to get.

Today i had a great meeting with K at the BBC about a BIG series i'm hopefully doing all the promo shots for. I'm 95% certain it's going to happen (so i am retaining 5% of my excitement just in case) and should be great fun and a fantastic boost into the world of TV promo stuff. I also had a word with A there about a different, smaller, but still exciting series i'm doing some shots for for bbc3 next week, so that whole side of my work is beginning to take off.

I'm also arranging a shoot with Devil Sold His Soul, the only band signed to Visible Noise records that i haven't already shot. Maybe i'll get a prize when i collect the full set...

2006-06-30T23:09:00.000+01:00

This is a first rough of an idea for a hopefully upcoming band shot. It's still in the early stages but i think it has the potential to look really good.

2006-06-29T19:30:00.000+01:00

Spent most of the day staring at this on the computer, as i did a major update on my website. You can now link through to whole shoots from the portfolio section of my website by clicking on the main image. The whole site works much more smoothly than it used to, and i have trimmed away 350 images and 219 pages that have become obsolete at one time or another but were still sat there.

I now feel that the website is looking and acting how i want it to, and that it is a worthy representation of me and my images for clients to look at. Now that that is up and running smoothly i can really make another big promotional push towards new clients...

2006-06-28T17:42:00.000+01:00

Fun shoot today with bassist and guitarist Dave Marks, doing some fairly basic promo shots for him. He scored full marks on the 'preparing for the shoot' scale, buying and bringing a selection of clothes and basses, and having a stylist friend to help out with the outfits. As a result he looked good and the pictures were easy, not like some people who think that two t-shirts makes for a 'selection of outfits'.

2006-06-27T22:32:00.000+01:00

Spent an interesting day yesterday trying to make Swindon look glamorous and alluring, a venture which occasionally reached alan partridge style heights of non-glamorousness. One of the five 'sights you must see in Swindon' which we had to photograph was 'The Magic Roundabout', which sounded promising, so imaging my thoughts as the taxi driver said 'here it is then' and i was faced with having to make this look appealing:

(for details on why you find the magic roundabout appealing, see here, if you're into crazy traffic intersections (and, deep down, who isn't) you'll love it...

Today i have been packaging up a couple of prints to send off that people have ordered through my print shop, after getting them signed and numbered:

and further tweaking my website, which now has new pictures in the portfolio section.

new look

2006-06-24T22:29:00.000+01:00

I have done a minor re-design of my website, changing the look to fit with my new Steve Newman designed logo:

and changing the navigation buttons. There are still a few tweaks to be made; i need to fix the tables so that the navigation bar/logo doesn't jump around and update the portfolio section, but i'm pleased with how it's looking. It's so good to be able to change it myself, for free, in dreamweaver rather than having to pay someone to do it for me; i feel like each time i change it it evolves in a god way and so it is gradually inching towards being the ideal website, and a worthy showcase both for my images and for my 'brand image'.

Shop til you drop

2006-06-24T21:13:00.000+01:00

Just got my first order through my online print shop, hurrah! It was for this one:

Had a great afternoon in london today seeing Lizzie;

who is off to NZ TOMORROW to write the words for her book of photography on South African street children. She is an all round LOVELY person and it's always a pleasure to meet up with her, so it was great to see her before she headed off, then it was back home for a delicious al fresco tea with mange tout and courgettes straight from the garden.

Golf

2006-06-24T10:29:00.000+01:00

Spent this morning retouching De Vere final shots from the other week to go in the post before 12:00, and they're looking very nice, some definite contenders for the advertising/corporate portfolio i'm gradually putting together to have alongside my music stuff.
Later on today we're off to meet Lizzie, for coffee before she jets off to New Zealand. It's probably best that i'm not at home, in case i get an insatiable urge to hack more bits off the various plant life in the garden...

amateur tree surgery night

2006-06-23T19:10:00.000+01:00

Did a spot of tree surgery this afternoon, chopping a big branch off the willow tree that was shading half the garden. Despite the (actually huge) branch almost knocking me off the ladder as it fell, everything went without a hitch and the veggies are now basking in the sunshine.

I've got a shoot next week with a bass player, and also my next De Vere job in Swindon on monday, so plenty to keep me busy.

bandwidth

2006-06-23T13:33:00.000+01:00

My site is down at the moment since hundreds of people went to the shop to see the Lacuna Coil prints and so have exceeded the bandwidth limit, so i've upgraded it to a higher capacity. It will take a day or so to kick in, but at least then i'll have the peace of mind of not worrying whether it'll go down towards the end of each month. Plus it's only $4.50 a month extra, which at the current exchange rates is about 20p (or something).

back to the land of wi-fi

2006-06-20T21:25:00.000+01:00

Writing this on the train on the way back from Bradford after a very relaxing weekend away from London. We borrowed a car and had a great time visiting Haworth, Skipton, Saltaire and York, and I’m now feeling refreshed and ready to get back to work.

Whilst in York, we stumbled across an amazing installation in St. Mary’s church called ‘echo’ by Susie Macmurray. The whole central space of the church was filled with what looked like jellyfish, or souls (in reality, amazingly, they were hairnets), and the overall effect was breathtaking.

I got an email from my website hosting company warning me that I may exceed the bandwidth limit for my website, which means that lots of people must be looking at my shop, which is good news, though as with all things internet it is a mixed blessing, as it looks like I’ll have to upgrade my bandwidth limit to cope. Monster thought there may be problems with people hotlinking to images and thus using massive amounts of bandwidth; anybody had any experiences of that or got any easy solutions to stop people doing it?

Another day BBCing tomorrow, then shooting a singer on Thursday, so enough to keep me busy without being too stressful, then off to Swindon on Monday for another De Vere hotels job.

A new shopping experience!

2006-06-16T11:31:00.000+01:00

Yes, my NEW SHOP is now online, selling limited edition, signed prints of my work. I have pics of Cristina Scabbia, Lacuna Coil, Bullet For My Valentine, Aiden, My Chemical Romance, Funeral for A Friend, Bring Me the Horizon, Sikth, Hey Gravity and Sone, with more to come as they are published.

A big thankyou to Monster for helping me with the PayPal buttons and being a genius codemonkey, and here's hoping that it'll be a big success.

more coffee, more pr

2006-06-15T20:17:00.000+01:00

Spent another productive day doing admin-y things, including resizing and burning to disc a shot of Cristina that Rock sound are going to run as another A1 poster next month. It's surprising how little time, as a photographer, you actually spend taking photographs. Huge portions of time are spent retouching, doing promotion, delivering shoots to clients, printing out invoices and licenses etc etc. Got it all done, however, and had a nice walk to Mill Hill post office with Monster, who is suffering with her wisdom teeth and feeling a bit rotten.
Later on i gave the front garden a short back and sides to match the back garden, a task that was marred only by steeping in a nice big pile of dog poo hidden in the long grass of our front lawn. What kind of person lets their dog poo in someone's garden?? Anyway, all looks very spick and span now.

I'm hoping i'll get my big A1 print back in the post from Photobox tomorrow, it being a test run for my online shop, which is steadily taking shape and will hopefully be put online tonighht or tomorrow morning.

Incidentally, (to reference the title of the post), the coffee I am drinking is Tesco Fair Trade, Decaffinated filter coffee. Before i got that (today) i was drinking CafeDirect Decaffinated filter coffee and there is another company called The Decaff Coffee company that also does a fair trade type. Since decaff (so i don't turn into a twitching addict) and fair trade (so i don't piss all over the third world in my quest for a hot beverage) are my Two Big Requirements, it's great to see that it's a growing market with more and more choice

Coffee and PR

2006-06-14T19:19:00.000+01:00

I have resolved to be more productive on the blog.

Spent a productive day putting together and posting promotional cards, cashing in on the multitude of shots now residing in Rock Sound.

I'd also had printed some shots from when we were in Spain, and also printed up a 84cm wide panorama of their house, which looks ace:

After that Monster needed to get some envelopes (she's in full promotional mode too) so we went down to Camden, had a look round a HUGE arcade of cool shops we didn't even know was there, saw a big model horse:

and had a nice coffee overlooking the lock.

straight lines

2006-06-14T19:14:00.000+01:00

I went crazy in the garden with the shears and trimmed all the bushes, and even the fir tree, so they are all now nice and straight. A scrap of order in a life filled with chaos...

Finally...

2006-06-14T08:44:00.000+01:00

...someone understands my pain. This is why (or at least one of the main reasons) I don't cycle all the time.

While i'm on a roll...

2006-06-13T22:14:00.000+01:00

...here's some recent Br1ng M3 The H0riz0n shots too:

After only four months...

2006-06-13T21:40:00.000+01:00

FINALLY, i can show you a whole load of work in print, four and a half months after shooting it, in the case of most precious Blood!

and a final, bad, cameraphone picture of the big poster, cos i forgot about it.

It's a Steve Brown mini portfolio! Go out and buy multiple copies.

The Vortex that is Dalston

2006-06-13T20:55:00.000+01:00

After dropping off some 10stprophets shots and jpegs of N1ck 01iveri at Rock Sound, and blagging a City 0f God CD (i am practicing in order to hone my blagging skills) which i noticed is mastered by the same chap that masters John Froud's albums, I made my way to The Vortex in Dalston and did a nice little shoot with Steve Lawson and Julie McKee:

Good news from Rock Sound sound too, they don't mind me selling prints of shots that i have done for them within their three months exclusivity period. So, it's full steam ahead for my (until now under wraps) online print shop, in which i'll be selling prints of my work, in much the same way that Monster does on her site. The newly published Cr1st1na shots will be up there, and their fan site have said they'll publicise that prints are for sale, so hopefully i'll get loads of orders from rabid 1acuna C0i1 fans...

Hot hot heat

2006-06-12T19:51:00.000+01:00

Great shoot for RS with Nick 0liveri of Kyuss / Queens 0f The St0ne Age / N1ck 0liveri And His Mondo Generator in Camden this afternoon, despite the super-stickiness of the weather; i was glad the shoot was in a bar with a tab for shoot personell! Nick, despite his hell raising reputation was a lovely chap and very relaxed, and the location looked like an old Cuban bar, with sunlight streaming through the window and casting patterns on the floor, so the pictures were looking great. I'm now converting the RAW files to jpeg to take to Rock Sound tomorrow, along with the finished 10stprophets images from a couple of weeks ago.

Later on i'll upload the shots i've taken of the new issue of Rock sound, OUT ON WEDNESDAY, with about a million of my shots in. It's looking fantastic, which is always a relief, you never know how things will look until you see them in print.

I might have to switch the computer off for a bit too, i think it's struggling in the heat too, and i REALLY don't want it to crash right in the middle of some big tweaking session on a 10stprophets image.

More 5ikth shots

2006-06-12T09:31:00.000+01:00

My 5ikth shots are beginning to appear all over the place, you can see one here on the Bei1er Br0thers website.

M-House

2006-06-11T20:55:00.000+01:00

i WANT an M-House. How hard can it be to find £150,000? Start by looking down the back of the sofa...

Golf

2006-06-09T21:02:00.000+01:00

Just got back from a little job photographing the golf pro at a 5 Star De Vere hotel and golf course in Leeds. Went up on the train with the art director, photographed him taking a lesson with the pro, had a KANGAROO steak for dinner in the excellent restaurant, stayed the night at the hotel and caught the train back today. All very civilised!

Conscious of the lack of recent pictures (expect a deluge when the new issue of Rock Sound comes out) i will post up some shots of Br1ng M3 Th3 H0r1z0n (to stop loads of fans googling onto my blog and nicking the pictures i'm going to start spelling band names in L33T), which have got a great reaction from the label, as soon as i can sort out the jpegs.

Also, as pointed out my Maft (who got everything but the magazine right) one of my 5ikth shots can be found on page 100 of the current Metal Hammer magazine, which incidentally also has a rather fantastic collectors edition cover with a plastic window full of blood in front of Kerry King's face for the feature on Slayer.

Although i loathe blogging crazes and lists and stuff, curiosity led me to see what came up as a 'random ten' on my iTunes. They were:

Mr Brightside - The Killers
Skin Ticket - Slipknot
Wooden Nickels - Eels
Charlie Don't Surf - The Clash
Girl From Mars - Ash
More Human Than Human - White Zombie (the best song EVER)
Gravity - Embrace
Bullet Theory - Funeral For A Friend
Mr Jack - System of a Down
Five day Night (Fat Freddy's Drop Remake) - Tubbs

Photoshopping advice

2006-06-01T11:41:00.000+01:00

I got an email recently asking about how to get into the digital imaging industry using Photoshop commercially and having duly waxed lyrical thought it might be useful, or at least intersting, to others so here it is:

There are plenty of Photoshop courses around, including evening classes and night school type courses. I would suggest that one of those for you to really get to grip with some of the features that you might not have come acoss yourself and to develop an 'eye' for what works and what doesn't, through being in a group situation with other people who are also learning. I would aso recommend the book "Photoshop Masking & Compositing" by Katrin Eismann, which i have found incredibly useful, as it is very focused on, surprisingly, masking and compositing, which are the core skills for a photoshop professional.

I had a look at your work and it's very nice, but i would suggest that if you want to be a professional retoucher you focus firstly on Masking & Compositing skills, ie. cutting things out accurately and then placing different elements together, and also on things like colour balance, levels and curves, hue/saturation (including it's colorize feature), and selective colour, in order to get things to merge seamlessly. You should also be up to speed with non destructive editing eg. using layer masks instead of the eraser tool, using a colour balance adjustment layer instead of irretrievably changing the colour of a layer etc. The layer pallette of most of my images ends up with loads of layers and adjustment layers (grouped into layer sets, or 'groups' in CS2) and most of them have a layer mask or clipping path attached to define which part of the image they will affect.

Most photoshop professionals would be very wary of using photoshop filters or doing anything too 'wacky' and in fact 90% of commercial retouching work involves very subtle changes eg. changing the cour of a car, swapping someone's head for one with a better expression, darkening and lightening. Crazy images juxtaposing fantastical elements are great fun to do but probably won't get you any commercial work as what they really want is for you to take a person shot in the studio and place them seamlessly into another environment, matching lighting, tone and colour. You should certainly continue doing the kind of stuff you enjoy in your spare time but in order to get work you should build up a portfolio of images that are very commercially orientated. These are also the kind of skills that you would be able to learn in a photoshop class.

One way to get into the industry at an antry level ( and the way that i developed my photoshop skills alongside my photography when i was still assisting other photographers) is to start off doing scanning or very basic retouching (such as getting rid of scratches and dust on scanned images and colour balancing and brightening) at a photo lab or design agency, and getting experience and slowly developing your skills 'on the job'. It may not seem very glamorous but it is the absolute best way to get better and most full on retoucher/designer jobs are probably just beyond your reach after only two years of photoshop experience (i have been using it constantly for about 8 years). Once 'in' the industry you will then be able to move up the ladder and get better positions, and you will be being paid for learning.

More people trying to make the world abetter place

2006-05-30T07:38:00.000+01:00

Two interesting articles today in the Guardian about Matthew Modine, and Al Gore, both doing their bit to try and combat climate change. I'm also reading The Green Imperative by Victor Papanek at the moment, about how designers, architects etc. have a moral imperative to think about how they design stuff, in terms of the ecological impact of making it and using it. All really good, thought provoking stuff.

Abandoned stations

2006-05-29T17:20:00.000+01:00

Yesterday our friends Matt and Claire very kindly took us out for lunch which was REALLY nice, and today we went to lunch with our other friends Kirsty and Dave, which was also a great day out.
We walked down to Finsbury Park from Highgate, along part of the Capital Ring, which for this section follows the route of an abadoned railway line, including a very cool ex-station, complete with platforms:

Tomorrow I'm back at the BBC for one last day, and then hopefully sorting out dates for my 4 DeVere jobs, as well as finishing delivery of the BMTH shots from last week.

An excellent use of police time and resources

2006-05-25T08:46:00.000+01:00

Reading Jyoti's blog i learn that Brian Haw, the peace activist who has been camped in Parliament Square, has had all his banners and placards, as well as his personal possessions such as bedding, taken by the police in a dawn raid involving 50 officers. Obviously the court ruling that Mr. Haw was perfectly within his rights to stay there and protest was too much for the government to bear, so they just decided to make life as unpleasant as possible for him instead. Nice.
I hadn't heard anything about this in the media either, like a lot of things these days. I will often find out (often through Jyoti) that there has been a demonstration involving 50,000 people or something, and that the BBC and the papers haven't mentioned a word of it. So much for an open and balanced media, i guess it is much more important that we learn all about the sex lives of 'people off of the telly'.

portico quartet at St. Barnabas' chapel

2006-05-24T11:06:00.000+01:00

I recently blogged about the Portico Quartet, who we saw playing down on the south bank. I just got an email from them, saying:

"Roll up, roll up! Come catch Portico Quartet play their LAST GIG this summer, this Friday!

Yes, we're off for a summer busking tour across Europe and are playing our last gig for a while at:

St Barnabas Chapel, Manette Street, Soho,

Friday 26th, 8pm.

£5 entry.

We've played this charming chapel a handful of times now and its been great evey time. This occasion has us performing in the beautiful garden, under the stars, on a no doubt balmy and romantic early summers eve. Can you picture it? Peaceful, intimate garden setting in the heart of Soho....candle lit and brimming with the hum of happy days...a glass of rouge and a full set from us...Sounds so good I might quit the band and come along and watch."

St Barnabas' looks like a beautiful venue, and the Portico Quartet are awesome, so if you have the chance and you live in london you should definately check it out. I'd love to go but i suspect our rather shakey finances (what with rent looming) might not allow it. Maybe Steve could take his minidisc and record a bootleg to sell on the internet. (It'd make a change from his own gigs, which he keeps forgetting to record...)

damn you, pc hegemony!

2006-05-24T09:28:00.000+01:00

You may (but probably don't) remember that back in march, I got very excited about SketchUp, a really intuitive 3D modelling program.
Well, today i found that there is a FREE version, called Google SketchUp, which ties in to Google Earth (you can make 3D buildings and then download them into Google Earth). Fantastic! I think, only to have my hopes and dreams of 3D fun crushed when i discovered that it is ONLY FOR PC! How rubbish is that? The Mac version is apparently coming "soon", but that is a very elastic term when used to describe software development. I will wait with baited breath...

Meanwhile, if any of you PC users download it and have a go, let me know how you get on.

bring me some coffee

2006-05-23T21:53:00.000+01:00

Yesterday i did another days retouching at the bbc before leaving early, hotfooting it across town to chalk farm, and doing a mini press shoot for Bring Me The Horizon. I already have a good relationship with Visible Noise, the label, having shot Bullet For My Valentine and Lostprophets, so it was good to see Matt and Julie from the label again and catch up. I didn't have much time to shoot as the boys had a train to catch so we had a definite looming deadline, but i managed to get lots of shots done and today (at the bbc again) i made a first edit, put the chosen shots into contact sheets and emailed them to the label for them to choose from. The shots look good; the band are all very young and haven't don many shoots, so it was an interesting challenge to make them look mean, and i think they turned out pretty good. Once Matt and Julie have made their selection i'll be able to post some up here.

All these 9-5's (well, 10-6's) at the bbc, plus shooting as well, are taking their toll. As a frail and delicate freelancer i'm used to only working one day in three, so although it's fantastic to have so much work on it's also quite hard work.

And on that note, it's time for bed.

advice

2006-05-19T20:43:00.000+01:00

My friend Alison sent me a booklet of poems today, and this one really grabbed me:

Advice
by Robert Crawford

When you are faced with two alternatives
Choose both. And should they put you to the test,
Tick every box. Nothing is ever single.
A seed's a tree's a ship's a constellation.
Nail your colours to this branching mast.

This is definitely how my career has developed. Every time i have had an opportunity i have grabbed it, and i have engineered situations where opportunities are likely to occur. Recently i have been doing some freelance retouching work at BBC picture publicity, and by the end of today i had arranged to bring in my portfolio to show to all the people who commission photography there. You never know where life will lead you, and if you close your mind to certain options or routes then you can only lose out. I always try to 'tick every box' and the mast to which my colours are nailed is certainly ever branching in new and unexpected directions.

Oh yes, and i found out today that the next issue of Rock Sound, as well as having a cover, a main feature and two other features carrying my photography, will also feature an A1 poster with my shot of My Chemical Romance from last year, which is fantastic news. It was only the second good shoot i ever did for Rock Sound; who would have thought that six months later i would be such a fixture at the magazine.

I feel very blessed at the moment.

More hotel work

2006-05-17T11:50:00.000+01:00

You may remember that a while ago i did two shoots for a very posh hotel chain, through an ad agency producing their in house magazine, and received two nights in one of their hotels in lieu of a fee (they were doing the first two issue of the magazine for free for the hotel). I just had a call from the very nice editor who is now producing the next issue and wants me to do FOUR shoots for this issue, for which i will get four nights in one of their hotels, plus four jobs in the NEXT issue which will be paying full fees.

Which is excellent!

Also got a call from nice julie at Visible Noise, for whom i'll be doing a mini press shoot for Bring Me The Horizon on monday. VN are the same label that manage Bullet For My Valentine and Lostprophets, both of whom i've shot recently, so it's nice to be building up a really strong relationship with the label.

Yesterday i met up with gem pope, a fellow music photographer who was great to chat to. As a photographer you don't tend to meet many other photographers, it being quite a solitary profession, so it's always nice to talk to someone who has had similar experiences.

in the meantime...

2006-05-14T22:22:00.000+01:00

I remembered that there are these two extra Sikth shots that i did which i CAN show you, just to keep you going until one of the great shots i keep raving about is actually published.

smug alert

2006-05-14T21:56:00.000+01:00

It's a very nice feeling to be feeling super positive about my own work at the moment. The Sikth shoot worked really well and was really well received. The Cristina pictures are still some of my favourite ever shots and have been cooed over by all and sundry, my Lacuna Coil shots from Vegas and spain worked out really well and look great and my new Lostprophets shots which i've been working on today are looking AWESOME! I wish i could post some of them but alas, you know it can not be. Cristina and Lacuna will be in the NEXT ISSUE of Rock Sound, out in one months time, and the Lostprophets ones will be in the one after that, so not TOO long to wait, but i'm bursting with anticipation all the same.

All i need now is for some of this great work and great feedback to actually get me some work...

culture day

2006-05-13T21:39:00.000+01:00

Had a great saturday out in london today, wandering round bookshops and having coffees after going to see an exhibition of childrens book illustration at waterstones in piccadilly which re-ignited Monster's inspiration to get on with her own children's book projects.
We ended up strolling along the south bank, and saw a fantastic group busking, who turned out to be The Portico Quartet, two Hang (a type of small steel drum) players, a saxophonist and a double bassist. They were fantastic; they apparently always play outside the NFT on the south bank on saturday afternoons so go and check them out.
We then made our way home and watched My Summer of Love on DVD, a fantastic film set in West Yorkshire very near where i grew up, and an amazing portrayal of two teenage girls who fall in love in a very intense way, and, in the brother of one of the girls, of evangelical christianity, which was unbelievably well observed and portrayed. I have been part of churches whose members acted and talked JUST like the people in the film, and coupled with the familiar landscapes and accents it all seemed very familiar and real. All in all, another fantastic film from our DVD club, and we still haven't missed TV once.

Myspace evil copyright thieves

2006-05-13T09:07:00.000+01:00

If you visit my Myspace page you will see that i have removed all the pictures that i had in the pictures section of my page. Why? Because Monster brought this to my attention after reading it on the Association of Illustrators site:

Friday, 12 May 2006

AOI would like to draw the attention of all users of Myspace website to the terms involving content which is posted on the website. The Terms can be found by clicking "Terms" at the bottom of the Myspace homepage and scrolling down to clause 6. The relevant Proprietary Rights paragraph section 1 is reproduced below.
These terms mean that Myspace may do virtually anything to any content – including illustration – without informing the content owner, or offering any remuneration. The popularity of this site and the huge amount of content available on it means these terms will create a substantial stock library for the sites owner, albeit only whilst that content is online. We suggest Myspace users protest to the organization and demand these terms are removed.
It is worth noting that Myspace have already modified these terms, as at the end of April the following section was still in place:
This license will terminate at the time you remove such Content from the Services. Notwithstanding the foregoing, a back-up or residual copy of the Content posted by you may remain on the MySpace.com servers after you have removed the Content from the Services, and MySpace.com retains the rights to those copies.
Extract from Myspace terms:

Proprietary Rights in Content on MySpace.com.

1. By displaying or publishing ("posting") any Content, messages, text, files, images, photos, video, sounds, profiles, works of authorship, or any other materials (collectively, "Content") on or through the Services, you hereby grant to MySpace.com, a non-exclusive, fully-paid and royalty-free, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense through unlimited levels of sublicensees) to use, copy, modify, adapt, translate, publicly perform, publicly display, store, reproduce, transmit, and distribute such Content on and through the Services. This license will terminate at the time you remove such Content from the Services. You represent and warrant that: (i) you own the Content posted by you on or through the Services or otherwise have the right to grant the license set forth in this section, and (ii) the posting of your Content on or through the Services does not violate the privacy rights, publicity rights, copyrights, contract rights or any other rights of any person. You agree to pay for all royalties, fees, and any other monies owing any person by reason of any Content posted by you to or through the Services.

So basically, any image, or song, or video that i have on Myspace can be used by Rupert Murdoch for ANY purpose he likes! And even now i've removed the pictures, there MAY be a backup copy lurking somewhere that they will still use. Pah, at least no more shots will be going up there.

Any of you that have songs or images on myspace, do bear this in mind and think whether you'd like to see your new song being used in an advert for Sky or The Sun, without paying any money to you or needing your permission.

everyone lurrrrves me!

2006-05-12T21:08:00.000+01:00

So, I was going to continue relating our trip to spain in minute detail, but i can't be bothered. Basically we spent the next couple of days splitting our time between tramping around the countryside taking photos (over 1,100 shots over 4 days)

(me at El Torcal)

and relaxing during the hottest hours by Chris and John's (the lovely auntie and uncle) pool.

(this shot was actually a long exposure taken as it was getting dark, but you can see how nice the pool and the house are).

As soon as we got back (and after the airline lost my tripod bag, then found it and delivered it to the house a day later) it was onto the computer tweaking and refining the Lacuna images on the G5 that i'd roughly put together on my laptop in spain. Once they were all looking spiffing i delivered them to Rock Sound on DVD, but Al's computer mysteriously failed to read the DVD, or rather it would read some images but not others, show the thumbnails but not the main images, and all sorts of other wierdness. His puter could read other discs so we thought maybe it was the dvd, but then i specifically tested it before i left by opening all the images, and then i tried it when i got home and it opened on my laptop too, so in the end it was just a mystery.

It was particularly annoying because among the ones that wouldn't open were the ones that i'd used the spanish backgrounds for, which i really wanted them to see. Luckily for me, i have the kindest and most generous wife, who volunteered to take the images into Rock Sound this morning on her way to Kew Gardens. I put the shots on my 1GB usb memory stick, as i couldn't trust any disc media, and they transferred over fine. Later on i got a message from Al saying they looked great, which is always a relief, even if I think they're great, i can never be sure that other people will.

As they're in the next issue (also with the Cristina ones, one of which is the cover) i should be able to post them up pretty soon.

I then got to work on my next job, the Lostprophets shoot i did last week. The brief is to make the shots look like soviet propaganda images, and as it thus takes a fair amount of graphic design i was a bit out of my comfort zone. I now feel very relaxed cutting bands out and pasting them into different environments, even in a very complex way, but this was a bit different, and i wasn't sure exactly how i was going to do it. However, out of my comfort zone is where i am most comfortable (if you know what i mean) and i soldiered on, finally putting together something that i thought i liked. i emailed it to Rock Sound and they loved it ('awesome' was i think the word they used) and they must have then sent it over to Visible Noise as i got a very nice txt from Matt (who i went to Germany for Bullet For My valentine with, saying how much THEY liked the shot too! This was great as it was only an early version that i sent, so it looks even better now. It was good to be told i was pushing it in the right direction, so now i can apply a similar look to more of the shots. These ones will be the cover of the NEXT issue, so again it shouldn't be TOO long before i can post them up.

spain

2006-05-11T08:06:00.000+01:00

Hello there, sorry for another long absence, I've been away. It feels like i've been very busy ever since i got back from
Las Vegas. As soon as i got back i had a couple of days work retouching at the bbc, then the shoot with Sikth, then the shoot with the Lostprophets, which went really well. The band really liked the concept for the shoot, which is to present the band in the style of Soviet propaganda posters, and the raw shots look really good. The day after tht was done we (Monster and i) flew out to Spain to shoot backgrounds for the Lacuna Coil shots from Las Vegas. We made our way to Gatwick, NOT on the gatwick express (which gives the impression that it is the only way to get there, even to the extent of having it's own, unbranded Quickticket machines at the station which don't SAY gatwick express on them but only give you the option to buy gatwick express tickets) but on the nice Southern railways service which is just as frequent, almost as quick, and costs five pounds less, and were in Malaga by 7:30pm. We then drove up to the Andalucian mountains with John, my uncle, arriving at their Finca by 9.

The finca is up in the hills and to get to it you have to drive for a couple of miles up a dried up riverbed and then up little hilside roads. On the first day i got dropped off at the far end of the riverbed and spent the morning walking back up towards the house, taking loads of reference shots along the way. It was so refresshing to be in a completely different kind of landscape, so refreshing to not just be shooting more variants on the theme of 'bits of london'.

As it is springtime there were still lots of wild flowers around, not to mention lizards, geckoes, hoopoes, partridges, birds of prey, snakes, frogs and turtles, all of which we saw at one point or another. The frogs, turtles and snakes we saw that afternoon on a second forray down to another, narrower part of the river just down from the house. It was like something from the lost world, with the combination of heat and sunshine and, at this point in the river, some water flowing above ground, producing a tropical scene of ferns, exotic bushes and wild flowers, all growing amongst huge boulders and between rocky hillsides. I got loads more pictures here and then we ventured further up and saw, in a deep pool wild turtles swimming about and then two water dwelling snakes poking their heads up out of the water to bask in the sunshine. All very exciting.

On the second day we drove up to El Torcal, a huge mountain formation of limestone which erosion has carved out into amazing rock formations.

More to follow, stay tuned...

33.333% success

2006-05-02T16:03:00.000+01:00

Pah, they liked the middle one but weren't too sure about the others so i may have to do two more for them. Which is fair enough, they are the client. The main reason i did the ones i did, particularly the wide shot where you can see a lot of water, was that they specifically wanted to show the red water and treated sky and industrial landscape, to tie in to both the album cover and the title of one of their songs. The fact that they have then picked the shot which features the least water and background throws my ability to pick what they'll like into disarray. I've sent them a contact sheet of raw shots and so i'll just have to wait until they get back to me and tell me which ones they want.

It's not pleasant having pictures rejected, but it's a really useful experience and stops you becoming complacent or lazy; it keeps your self critical faculties sharp. If everyone always told me i was brilliant it would be easy to become self indulgent and arrogant, so it's no bad thing to have to bend top the client's will occasionally. However, i REALLY hope they like the next ones i do for them, training in humility and self criticism is something to be taken in small doses i think...

New pictures!

2006-05-02T12:20:00.000+01:00

At last! Some brand new shots to post, without having to worry about distant publication dates and magazine exclusivity. They are the ones i shot the other day, for the bands label. They have been pretty heavily photoshopped, in order for them to fit in with the feel of the album cover:

and i think they work well.

It was a challenge getting the very stylised water and sky to work without just looking like a 'look what i can do on the computer' photoshop job, but i think i got it working in the end, and the colours and tones work with each other and everything 'sits' together well. I'm waiting to hear back from the band's management as to whether they like it, so fingers crossed...

the littlest hobo

2006-04-29T17:01:00.000+01:00

No sooner am i back in the UK than i'm off again. I'm shooting Lostprophets on Wednesday and then on Thursday I'm flying out to Spain (with Monster), all booked now, yikes. It's really nice to have it all happen at such short notice actually, it keeps the excitement fresh and feels very spontaneous!

In gardening news, we've now planted out all the beans, half the tomatoes, all the sweet peas, half the nasturtiums, all the peas and some radishes. Much good it'll do us, as they'll probably all die while we're away now. And on that happy note...

messing about on the river...

2006-04-28T20:17:00.000+01:00

Great shoot with Sikth today. We met up at North Greenwich and did the shoot on an old unused slipway down into the river, which we slowly moved down as the tide went out (it must have gone down about 4 feet while we were there) so as to stay near the water's edge. The band were really nice and despite it almost being TOO sunny (makes it hard to light them with lights when the sun's so bright, plus it's hard to see on the camera how the shots are looking) i think we got some really good shots.

I also got the go ahead from Lacuna's label to nip over to Spain for a couple of days and shoot some more backgrounds for the shots we did in vegas. They'll pay for my ticket and as my lovely auntie and uncle who live in spain and with whom we'll be staying have offered to pay for her ticket, Monster's going to come too. It'll be fantastic to see them again, and i should be able to get some great reference shots of rocky hillsides, cliffs and arid landscapes. We just need to book the flights now...

a day of, er... i dunno

2006-04-27T22:09:00.000+01:00

Went down to the Thames in Chelsea this morning to see a possible location for my shoot with Sikth that their management thought might be good. Unfortunately it wasn't, so i went to check out my backup plan next to the Millennium Dome which was just right, but which meant that i spent most of the day on the tube and got home mid afternoon feeling a bit lacking in energy or motivation to do anything else. I therefore went out into the garden, planted runner beans, french beans, sweet peas, peas and radishes and potted out tomatoes and red onions, and then came back in and had a migraine for a while. Tiring of the novelty of feeling horrendously awful i recovered, had tea, and we watched the first couple of episodes from series one of Teachers, being reminded yet again just how fantastic it is.

So not a very productive day workwise, therein lies the problem with spending half a day on the tube. Finished my book though, Pattern Recognition by William Gibson which was excellent. I've also just finished the Time Travellers Wife by Audrey Niffenegger , which was absolutely amazing, and NoCo by Scarlett Thomas, which was also fantastic. It's been a good few weeks for reading, I've also recently read Mobius Dick by Andrew Crumey, which explained quantum theory in the most accessible way i've yet read, and which inspired Monster to do her recent Schrodinger's cat illustration. Just goes to show, there's all sorts of wierd and wonderful delights available at your local library.

Viva Las Vegas

2006-04-26T09:59:00.000+01:00

OK, so, Las Vegas, shooting Lacuna Coil. I would have bloged sooner but I've been riding the wave of crushing exhaustion.

Friday was monster's birthday so we got up early at 6:30 and had a present opening session before i set off at 8:30 to meet sarah from the label at Victoria station. After catching the gatwick express to (you guessed it) Gatwick we made our way through all the security (the checks were all very relaxed, though thorough, and friendly, a contrast to the stone faced thugs and signs warning you not to make jokes at the American aiports) and, after lamenting the inexplicable lack of a Starbucks at Gatwick, caught the plane to Philadelphia.

Eight hours later we made our way through the REALLY thorough security for entering the US (i was so glad i had my i-visa), got our bags back, checked our bags back in, and waited for an hour or so before getting on a smaller, less comfortable plane for five hours to Las Vegas, which only barely made it into my good books by showing Fun With Dick And Jane (on the ceiling mounted TVs, that's like, SOOO mid nineties!) and finally arrived at las Vegas at about 9:30pm, which to me was 5:30am. by the time i got to my room in the Topicana hotel and Casino, which was every bit as tacky as it sounded, it was midnight, or to my body clock 8am, and despite having been awake for over 24hrs COLD NOT sleep. I lay awake in the dark for about 6hrs, checking the bedside clock periodically to see that only a few minutes had passed, and at 6:30am i gave up, got up, and had a bath before hitting the street at 7:30 to see some sights before meeting up with sarah at 9:00.

I took loads of pictures of the bizarre and amazing buildings along the strip as you can see and by 9:00 was ready for some breakfast, but we walked around some more and finally had something to eat and drink by around 10 before heading off to the venue to meet the band and tour manager.

We had hoped to be able to drive out to the desert and take pictures there but in the end the transport just took too long to arrange and so we didn't have time. Instead i took some singles shots in the venue and then we walked round the back of the venue (the magazine didn't want 'Hey look we're in Las Vegas' shoot so no big casinos in the background) and did the shoot at the side of a big highway. The light was fantastic; the sun was shining from behind but then reflecting off the yellow tinted windows of a big hotel so their faces were lit by golden light, it looked great.

After the shoot we went and had dinner, then i took shots of the band's live set from the pit and from the side of the stage, then enjoyed one of the more surreal events of the trip (which was all slightly surreal due to extreme lack of sleep and the fact that Vegas is so wierd). Lacuna are touring with Rob Zombie (who is headlining) and after their set i was in their dressing room with them when Rob poked his head round the door an said "Can i just introduce my friend Nic to you? He really liked your show." The band politely prepared to smile at Rob's friend, who walked through the door revealing himself to be... Nicolas Cage! Very surreal... Anyway, Cristina and Andrea, once they recovered, scampered after him to get a picture so i followed and took a couple of pictures of Cristina, Andrea, Rob Zombie and Nicolas Cage, which was kinda cool.

We then watched Rob Zombie's set, which was EXCELLENT (i was a huge White Zombie fan when i was younger so it was great to him now), and he played my two favourite White Zombie songs, Super Charger Heaven and More Human Than Human, AND my favourite of his solo songs, Living Dead Girl so all in all that was worth the hundreds of hour in the air on it's own. Rob was great and his new guitarist is John 5, who used to be Marilyn Manson's guitarist, which i unfortunately only reallised AFTER i'd almost bumped into him backstage, i would have said hello otherwise.

After the end of the gig everyone dispersed off to the tour bus, or to go out and get drunk, and me and sarah headed off for a late night snack at Denny's diner, which turned out to be a ridiculously huge amount of food, before bed and, finally, some much needed sleep. then up at 7:30 the next morning in order to get to the airport for nine, another few days in the air, and finally back to see monster at lunchtime on Monday.

All in all an exhausting, disorientating and all-over-too-soon trip, but very fun and the pictuires are looking really good. Hopefully now i have my i-visa i'll have these kind of jobs more often.

just when you thought it was safe to go back in the garden...

2006-04-19T21:06:00.000+01:00

...the garden bore rears his ugly head again. Yes, i'm sorry, but i'm going to have to keep showing you pictures of my children, erm, plants, as they grow. I did also make a crazy paving path in the garden at the weekend, quite possibly the most impressive thing i (or indeed anybody, ever) have ever done, but Monster unaccountably failed to take pictures of it (??) when she was photographing the seedlings, so i'll have to save that bit of amazingness for another time. In the meantime:

radishes:

tomatoes:

peas:

and french beans:

In other, cooler, news, reminding you that i am actually a rock music photographer and not just an old man with an allotment, my excellent graphic designer friend steve newman has designed me a new logo, which i really like.

I love the way that parts of the text seem to be disintegrating, it really fits with my style of photography and the whole rock music genre that i'm establishing a career in. Steve has also designed various logos for bands, including Sone, and should go far.

scrub vigorously with wire wool...

2006-04-18T17:22:00.000+01:00

After a nice 4 day weekend (more gardening and seed planting, among other things) but as this is in danger of becoming a gardening blog i won't go on about it) it was back to work today. it's really hard to motivate yourself back into work mode when there's no one to answer to and no boss telling you to get back to work, but the thought of dying penniless in a gutter spurred me on and i went into town to buy a sensor cleaning kit for my DSLR. As you can see in this picture:

there was LOADS of crap on my sensor and while it only really shows up at apertures of F16 or above (ie. very wide depth of field) it's obviously not very good for the overall image quality. You can go and get your sensor cleaned at a couple of places for about £30 but after reading a few websites i decided that i could actually do it myself with a reasonable chance of not destroying my thousand pound camera. I bought the kit, a bottle of alcohol stuff that cleans the sensor then evaporates off and some little spatulas covered with soft lint free cloth, and gave the sensor a good wipe, and now it's sparklingly clean! Cost a lot less than £30 too.

I also spoke to universal about a likely shoot with Sikth, a british metal band, next week which should be good, and sorted out some details of the now imminent trip to Las Vegas (on friday) which i'm now getting excited about as it's done that thing of going from 'ages away' to 'in no time at all' within a day or two.

Whoa!

2006-04-17T00:12:00.000+01:00

The peas are racing ahead, closely followed by the french beans.

The pictures i couldn't upload yesterday

2006-04-15T10:40:00.000+01:00

The garden, dug and ready for planting.

Pots of seeds outside

Pots of seeds inside

The first pea shoots coming up

Cool huh?

pixels and seeds

2006-04-14T10:43:00.000+01:00

The other day i actually did a proper days work, in an office! Well, i would have done had there been any work to do but as it was i had a very gentle introduction to the world of 9-5. To explain...

I got a call from a very nice man at the BBC who had had me recommended as a retoucher. Could i come in for the odd day here and there, on a freelance basis, to cover for holidays etc. So this week i went in for my first day. I got there for 9:30 sharp and presented myself at reception as requested, only to find that my contact couldn't be contacted. After half an hour or so someone else in the department was called, who explained that my contact was off supervising a shoot and had eveidently forgotten he needed to buzz me in. I was told crucial technical information such as where to get a tea or coffee (I am happy to report that the BBC stocks CafeDirect and TeaDirect in the staff kitchen.) and where the milk was kept, and then advised to amuse myself on the internet as there wasn't anything to do right now.
Four hours passed...
I left for my lunch break...
I came back...
Another hour passed...
There was then a brief frenzy of excitement as someone gave me an actual job to do, cutting out a presenter and putting him onto a background with someone else. Then it was back to the internet for the rest of the day.
So not a particularly hardcore introduction to the world of work, but i still got paid, and they were very relaxed about it, they have to have people there even if they're not used, just in case stuff comes up.

Back home, as i mentioned recently, we've been planting seeds ready for another bumper veg harvest this summer. The garden has been dug and strewn with compost and chicken shit (as my parents call it, it's manure pellets made from, yes, dried chicken poo) ready for planting:
I was going to post some pictures but Blogger isn't cooperating so i'll try again later.

For what would i be prepared to march?

2006-04-11T17:47:00.000+01:00

The Lawson brought my attention to this great article by Jenni Russell, detailing the ways that the present government is:

"briskly and fundamentally reshaping the relationship of the individual to the state, of the Lords to the Commons, and of MPs to ministers. The ID cards bill will allow the authorities unprecedented surveillance of our lives, and the power to curtail our ordinary activities by withdrawing that card. The legislative and regulatory reform bill, now entering its final stages, will let ministers alter laws by order, rather than having to argue their case in parliament. Then this weekend brought another shocking government proposal to increase its own power and weaken the restraints upon it. Lord Falconer made clear that the government intends to drastically curtail the powers of the Lords...In future peers will have to pass any legislation that the government deems important, whether it was in the manifesto or not. They will effectively be neutered."

The government claims that it is doing these things in the interests of the people, and that we should trust them as they are 'good people', but as Jenni Russell points out:

"Good people can do bad things. What's more, bad people can follow them. Assurances of virtue are irrelevant. What matters is where power lies and how it is controlled. That stale phrase, an elective dictatorship, is now a real danger."

It got me thinking, what would i be prepared to actively protest against (or for)? I have never marched for things before because i haven't felt that it would make any difference, but there comes a point where even if it doesn't change anything, it is still important to get your voice heard. Some people are into politics for it's own sake, they love the 'game' of political manouvering and follow party politics in the same way that other people follow football but to my mind the only justification for being embroiled in the sleaziness that is the political system is if you are making things change for the better, something the three main parties are singularly failing to do. Maybe the time has come to shake off my 21st century, Generation X, post modern apathy towards politics and actually do something, however small.

monday

2006-04-10T21:00:00.000+01:00

Having toyed with the idea of taking advantage of the fact that i'm freelance, deciding to declare today saturday, and have another weekend, i reluctantly acknowledged the fact that it was indeed the week again and tried to get on with some work. However much i tried to get on with some images though, it just wasn't happening so in the end i went off to Primrose Hill to take some pictures of the London skyline. They came out well but reviewing the images i did notice how much muck there is on the sensor of my camera. It only shows up under certain conditions, but it's definitely worth getting sorted, particularly before i go to America in a couple of weeks time.
Anyway, it was good to get out of the house and do something constructive. Sometimes when inspiration just won't come the only thing to do is to get on with something else and hope that the energy of doing that distracts you and allows ideas to flow.