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

It’s been a week since Rachel Khoo’s TV show, ‘The Little Paris Kitchen’ first aired and the UK media has collectively fallen in love with her style and cooking.

It is easy to see why; The first thing she said when she saw the kitchen we were shooting in was, “wow this is so much bigger than my kitchen”, and excitedly started showing us what food she had brought over with her. As usual, before I begin shooting I have a quick chat with the subject and ensure they are relaxed and know what I expect from them before we shoot the portrait. The results can be seen in my portfolio (click on the above image) or on the easyliving magazine website here.

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/

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