I’ve been away for two weeks in Japan ; one week was working on several assignments, and the second week working on a personal project. On the weekend I flew back to the UK, Liverpool was holding it’s annual tattoo convention, which is also the host of the UK Tattoo Industry awards.

Tattoos and tattooing hold a special place in my photographic heart ; I mostly shoot fashion and editorial lifestyle or portraiture these days, but started out shooting a lot of work for the UK tattoo magazines. Through tattooing I have travelled across the world and met all sorts of unique and interesting people… ranging from a tattooist who started out tattooing Lithuanian mafia types, through to shooting catwalk models and photographing some legendary old-school tattoo masters. I still do some work for the tattoo magazines, even though I haven;t been tattooed myself for several years.

You can imagine my excitement upon landing, to hear that I had been awarded ‘Best Photographer 2012′ for the third year in a row!

As ever I’d like to thank everyone involved in the nominations and voting, and really do appreciate your support.

I’m also pleased to see that Lal (a gentleman I have shot for magazine covers and features) has been awarded a well-deserved position in the hall of fame too !

If you are a regular reader of the lifestyle sections of magazines and enjoy the finer things in life, then you are probably already familiar with the name Tony Conigliaro.  Acknowledged as one of the UK’s pioneering drinks creators, he has received  many awards for his cocktail creations and much of the press credited him as the inventor of the ‘molecular cocktail method’. Unsurprisingly, Tony has little time for worrying about what labels the media are using to describe scenes and trends in drink making, instead he prefers to work on his latest creations at ‘The bar with no name’.

As ever we had a very tight time limit to do the interview and shoot two separate set-ups. Some photographers moan about this, but to be honest, I quite like the additional pressure ; I always try to work quickly when doing editorial and I find it is a good way to focus ideas and go straight to the heart of the piece.

Tony and his staff were quite accommodating and my only regret on the shoot was that we didn’t have time to slowly enjoy the cocktail’s that were made for us.

For the curious, his bar can be found at http://69colebrookerow.com

I am excited to be able to share that Photographer of the Year 2011 Competition by ‘Samsung’ and ‘Digital Photographer’ Magazine  awarded me an “honourable mention” in the final.

The portrait in question is one of Mo Copoletta, tattooist and owner of ‘The Family Business’ tattoo studio in Exmouth Market, London. The shot itself was taken as part of a shoot/interview I did with Mo when I was sent by Skin Deep Magazine. To see more of internationally renowned artist Mo’s work, please visit http://www.thefamilybusinesstattoo.com/

Last month I was invited to submit a print for the above exhbition, so I figured, “what the heck” and shot a special horror/Christmas piece for the Guys at Haunted. The print itself is a one off and half the proceeds from it’s sale will go to charity. It starts on Friday night, come down !

Attitude clothing followed me on one of their recent alt-fashion / lifestyle shoots and make a short behind-the-scenes video, it was my first time being filmed while shooting… It was a totally different experience to being photographed while shooting, but Nicola at Attitude made the process simple and painless. you can visit their on-line shop via their youtube channel, or just watch the video below:

It’s December so it means magazines release their retrospective’s and round-ups of the year. The latest Rocksound features a series of ‘Photos of the Year’ posters, and I am pleased to see that one of my images from the final ‘Ghost of a Thousand’ show was included in the line up. You can see more from that final gig in a gallery here .

I’ll let you into a little secret….. on Dec 30th Rocksound will also be putting up a best of 2011 gallery on their website, Dillinger Escape Plan fans might want to check it out.

Usually I am called by clients to shoot images for a editorial feature, or to shoot a series of images for use in a campaign. Over the last year I have been increasingly asked to shoot images for longer series, or for a full catalogue. In October ‘Attitude Clothing’ approached me to help shoot their new catalogue, and images for use in magazine advertising. The company wanted to step away from the usual image that ‘alternative’ clothing companies have, producing images with a more editorial lifestyle fashion feel whilst still retaining their ‘alternative’ image.

I saw the potential for this to be an interesting project, so we started talking about ideas. As the company is a lot smaller than the mainstream fashion companies I have worked with, we unsurprisingly had a smaller budget and a smaller team. Instead of feeling restricted by this, there was actually a greater sense of freedom, spurning us to explore different creative avenues.

Above is the cover of the catalogue and two of my favourite out-takes from the lifestyle shoots. One of the challenges I faced with this was shooting winter clothing in the middle of an unexpected heatwave. Careful timing, positioning and a pinch of luck allowed me to take the image at the bottom without having to spend time in photoshop chaining the season.

The company can be found online at http://attitudeclothing.co.uk