In January Easy Living commissioned me to photograph four features in preparation for the relaunch of it’s print and on-line magazines. The brand new look and format of their on-line magazine has been met with overwhelming positive feedback, and I am glad to see all their hard work has paid off.

For the first shoot we travelled South towards Bristol to meet Tom and Henry (whom you may recognise from The Fabulous Baker Brothers currently showing on Channel 4), where we were invited into their home and they cooked for us as part of the feature. Shooting for a digital feature is different to shooting for print; Both shoots require you to get ‘the’ shot that makes the article, but online allows you to go a little deeper and tell sub stories as well as the main story. I guess this is the advantage of not being limited by the number of physical pages. The shoot itself went well, the brothers were easy to work with (when they weren’t trying to out-do each other in the cooking stakes!) and Tom’s  dog ‘Toast’ even managed to get some time on camera.

To find out what the Brothers cooked for us, please click on the photo.

To see some of the other features please click the links below to be taken to the Easy Living site :

Kenna (Internationally renowned owner of Kennaland and hair stylist to everyone from the catwalk to the red carpet).

Esther Walker (Food writer and the brains behind the Receipe Rifle ).

Lucie Allison (Vintage obsessed designer inspired by her partner’s years in the antiques trade).

‘Steve Davis’ is a name you would normally associate with snooker, not psychadelic rock-and-roll. Yet this is the reason why I was commissioned to shoot him and Kavus Torabi (front man of the avant-pop band Knifeworld and former member of The Cardiacs) in a London pub last month. After a chance meeting the two gentlemen became friends and now share a regular radio slot on called The Interesting Alternative Show.

“It takes a short while to get used to snooker champion Steve Davis in person, as he has a sense of humour drier than Lynchburg, Tennessee during a heat wave. On the afternoon of our lunch with the snooker champion and guitarist Kavus Torabi, we take a people carrier to the pub and the driver takes a wrong turning somewhere near King’s Cross. We trundle to a halt at the end of a street blocked off with bollards. Davis is as implacable as a Cyberman when he nods at the two-foot gap between the bollards and says: “You’ll get her through there no problem.” The driver looks worried and stammers: “I’m not sure I can do it.” Davis weighs up the situation for a moment and says: “Nah, you’ll glide through there, don’t worry about it.” The driver starts to look panic stricken: “I really don’t think there’s enough room.” Eventually the player, who was nicknamed the Ginger Magician after winning more professional titles than anyone else in his field, has to gently explain that he is joking. There is an audible whistle of relief as the taxi starts reversing up the road.………….. ”

To read the article in full, and see more from the shoot click here.

In my opinion thequietus.com is one of the best things to have happened in music / entertainment / pop-culture journalism for a long time. The writing is insightful, informed and witty and their finger is on the pulse of quality, not just what the internet experts are buzzing over today and forgetting tomorrow. The guys who run the site (and write a lot of the articles) wanted me to shoot a portrait of them for use in their new years feature; They challenged me to come up with a concept that reflected their sense of humour, their style, cultured background and of course, to make you stop and stare. Click on the image to go to the site, see more from the shoot and to read their ‘New Years’ message.

It is hard to pick my ‘highlights of 2011′, as the year was very busy and I’ve travelled so much and met/photographed so many awesome people along the way. Below is a quick list of my top ten highlights of the last year (in no particular order).

• Winning the ‘Best Photographer 2011′ awarded by the UK Tattoo Industry for the 2nd year in a row.

• Being interviewed for Radio 1 about my photography.

• Seeing my name on my first billboard in Selfridges (for the Sophie Hulme Collection).

• Being the first UK photographer to have his work exhibited in the ‘London mile’ Gallery space (as part of a group exhibition).

• Travelling to Hamburg to shoot ‘The Beatsteaks’ for Rocksound magazine.

• Shooting my first Charity Project for their fundraising material (see a future blog update for more info).

• Having one of my portraits selected for the Royal Photographic Society Biennial Showcase Exhibition.

• Freelancing for Conde Nast (Digital) on their picture desk and shooting street style for them.

• Launching al-overdrive-weddings.com and shooting a wedding photographers’ wedding day!



• Shooting a portrait session with country legend Josh T Pearson on the day his album hit no.1 in the amazon sales charts.

I’m hoping that 2012 continues to be just as exciting as 2011 was, I was lucky to have so many good clients and fun shoots last year. I wish everyone who has commissioned me, assisted on my shoots, done hair/make-up for me, modelled for me, linked to my images, recommended me to potential clients, or taken the time to browse this site the very best for 2012 !

Happy new year !

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

It’s taken a while to find the time to organise and prepare for the new site launch, but I can finally announce that I have launched my dedicated wedding photography site – specialising in quirky and vintage inspired weddings.

There has been a stigma attached to wedding photography in the past decade, but with a new generation of empowered couples wanting ‘the wedding that suits them and reflects their interests’ it has provided many photographers from the areas of fashion and editorial a chance to stretch their creative wings.

I certainly enjoy shooting weddings – it’s an honour to be brought in capture someone’s special day, and unlike editorial or studio shoots, there is no chance to do a reshoot! As a bonsu I have found it is a very good way to keep my story telling and fast shooting/fast thinking skills honed and fresh.

The above shot is from a wedding I recently covered for a wedding photographer. Interestingly, I didn’t actually feel any extra pressure on the day, even though the bride was an experienced and succesful wedding photographer herself. The only ‘problem’ was that she was itching to get her camera’s out too and snap the guests !

you can visit the site here:

al-overdrive-weddings.com

Most of this month so far has been taken up by a mixture of shooting fashion work and various (as of yet unpublished) editorial portraits.

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Recently I shot my first animated billboard for upcoming designer Sophie Hulme (both Vogue and Instyle are fans of her exclusive Selfridges ranges). The brief was to shoot the bag and the animated charms (soldiers, planes and a bubble blower to name a few) for use in a dual billboard  in-store. The animation lasts for almost 2 minutes and spans both boards, with items appearing to move between the two.

Despite the scale of the technical challenge we still found time to have fun within on the shoot ; If you watch the video a couple of times you soon notice that the soldiers have their own personalities and quirks as they abseil down the designer’s bag and rescue the charms. Instead of using stock images for the bubbles, we shot the bubbles live in the studio, by the end of the shoot we had discovered the secret behind blowing perfect bubbles!

As you can see from the images at the top of the blog, the animation is the focal point of the display, and was designed to catch shopper’s attention as they travelled down the escalator. I am lucky to have worked with a great team on this brief and would like to credit Freya Rabet and Sophie Hulme (who managed to sneak a cameo into the animation) for their production skills and hard work, allowing us to complete the shoot in only two days.

You can see more of Sophie’s designs at http://sophiehulme.com/

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I am pleased to be able to say that my entry to the Royal Academy of Arts (RAA) ‘Eyewitness’ Photography competition was selected for the final judging stage of the competition. With over 5500 entries I am honoured to have made it so far, and am also taken aback by the quality of the winning submissions.

Below is what Colin Ford CBE (the Curator of Eyewitness exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts) had to say about the competition:

‘It has been a delight to be involved with the Royal Academy Eyewitness competition. With such a high quality and quantity of submissions, it has been a tough decision. However, the panel feel the winning images best represent their categories and are contemporary pictures which remain true to the styles of the Hungarian photographers’.

To see the winners work please visit The royal Academy website.

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Over the last year I have been enjoying shooting more and more fashion work for clients, and the above images are examples fo work I have shot over summer that the clients have now released from embargo. I’m currently working on a fun and technically difficult fashion set, which should be released early September, so keep your eyes open !

Also, a while ago Radio 1 interviewed me for a programme about tattoos and spoke to me about my role as a photographer, and the show goes live tonight at 9pm.
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