Camerabag.tv

Great series of video interviews with photographers over at camerabag.tv including one of the all time greats Frank W Ockenfels

Creating Balance

For the past 6 months my feet have barely touched the ground. Earlier on in the year I was invited to take part in a project curated by Claire Sambrook of Strong Island in conjunction with Anglepoise.
The project would see 10 artists paired up with 10 photographers to create one image that would become a poster. The iconic lamp didn't have to directly feature in the image as the wide range of styles applied to the 10 posters would all be linked by the common theme 'creating balance'. This was a great opportunity to work on something where we could experiment and play around with lots of different ideas, coupled with the input from each respective artist.

The artist/s I partnered up with were husband and wife Barry & Roo Abrook who share a mutual love for skateboarding, screen printing, taxidermy and victoriana along with myself.
The final image has now been handed in and will be on show alongside the other posters in the window of Liberty's of London. Claire will be holding a talk on the project at the V&A museum, the project will also be a part of The Icons Design Trail and all of the work will be on show at The Aspex Gallery in Gunwharf Quays, Portsmouth.

I would like to say a huge thank you to Claire and to Anglepoise for involving me in this project and can't wait to see all of the work come together.

Yazmin

We shot these in the studio towards the tail end of last year. Just by changing a few lights around you can completely change the mood of a picture. It's always great working with Yazmin, she knows how to work a camera and isn't afraid of goofing around.
I will be shooting the album artwork to Lord Lav's debut album Lord of the Dead at the start of february, we have all of our zombies lined up including Yazmin and a small group of friends and family so watch this space.

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Snow day

We were all told to expect snow this weekend and I don't think anyone was actually expecting it to happen, so we woke up to a few inches of snow on friday morning and as always in Britain everything ground to a halt. There is an amazing silence that comes with freshly fallen snow, whether it's the lack of traffic on the roads or the fact that we were up at 7am i'm not quite sure.

So taking advantage of a sudden day off I called in on my friends Matt and Jon to drink tea and shoot a few pictures in the car park out the back of where they work.

El Mariachi

This is a portrait of mexican wrestling fan and film maker Rob Mcdaid, which I shot for my exhibition last year. Rob wears a mariachi uniform that was given to him as a gift by a group of his film students. 

He is currently editing his first music video which he shot over two days in London with another good friend of ours Johnny Griffith. 

With an image like this the costume obviously plays a large part, but I think what sells it is the pose. It has a gunslinger quality to it and a confidence that is hard to fake. I always love working with people who like to play around in front of the camera, as there's only so much you can do to set something up. At the end of the day it boils down to the person you are photographing and how they can project their character into the lens.

Happy new year everyone!

New portraits

New shoot with @alexisshep shot during movember.
This was planned as a precursor to another shoot which will have to wait for the ground to dry and involves making a few props, location scouting and renting a costume. I'm finding as time goes on that my shoots are turning into bigger productions, so every now and again it's good to shoot something that has no prior planning and doesn't require a huge set up!

Both images were shot with a Bowens 400 head fitted with an octabank  

Matt De Tisi

A couple of new portraits that I shot of the legendary Matt De Tisi a few weeks back.
Matt worked as the best boy on zombie resurrection. For those of you who don't know what a best boy is, they are responsible for the day to day handling of the lighting equipment on a film set and work under The Gaffer.

Bless This House

A few weeks back I did a shoot my friend John outside his house.
The idea behind the shoot was to create a scene that could have come from a 1970's British sitcom, where an Eric Morecambe inspired character interacted with passers by.

I've known John for years and used to assist him on shoots up in London, pretty much everything I know about photography I have learned from him.

The shoot took about an hour with most of Johns neighbours out in their gardens, although none of them seemed to pay attention to what was going on. 

We used a pair of 3d glasses instead of his actual glasses just to give his character a more exaggerated appearance. At least they're good for something!

Shout It Out Loud

As of Wednesday it will be three weeks until the opening night of my exhibition, so I thought I would upload one of the new shots that will be included in the show.
This is a portrait of my friend and model Yasmin, shot on a Mamiya C330 using natural light at her home. Also in the show will be one of the polaroids we shot during this session.
The show will run for two weeks beginning the 2nd of August with a private view on the 1st.
Lord Lav will be DJing, so come down, see the work and meet some great people.

Buffalo Huddleston

During my first visit to Guernsey I had the pleasure of meeting Mike aka Buffalo Huddleston who was sharing a house with my friend Andy at the time. Everyone kept telling me how good he was at playing the guitar but it wasn't until a few years later that I finally heard him play. As you can see by the video below he is a very talented musician, so if you like what you see please share this video or at the very least click the like button on youtube.

Check out his sound cloud page here


Thanks for listening

Here's one I made earlier

Shot this while working on the first episode of Lord Lav TV. In the upcoming episode Lav makes a drum machine out of everyday things you would find lying around the house.

Old work New work

Just going through and retouching some old work ready for the new website.

Rain Rain Rain

This started off as a "what are you doing this afternoon?" shoot, which turned into dodging out of the rain which in turn became "let's go get a fry up".

Breakfast of Champions

A few weeks back we shot a new opening for Zombie Resurrection, for the shoot we were kindly leant a stack of replica guns to equip the characters with. After the shoot I had an idea to use them for a photoshoot and started thinking how to incorporate them into a picture. I had recently seen a coffee table book called "Chicks with Guns" and really liked the way that the pictures worked. The gun almost seemed to be a surreal element. You could take away the gun and the picture would still work just as well although with an altered context.

I am currently working on photographing film makers and thought this would be an ideal opportunity to combine the two ideas, so I called up my good friend Jake of Charmed Apocalypse Pictures and we set the shot up at his parents house.
Set decoration wise it was really simple, the house already has an amazing 1970's look to it, so it was just a case of moving a few things round, like the carved wooden wolf in the background and arranging the guns on the table. I tried to keep the background as clean and clutter free as possible so it was not distracting in any way.
Lighting wise I had a beauty dish boomed directly overhead with a reflector to kick light onto the face mixed with the ambient light.
For the portrait outside one light in an umbrella to camera left.

More Brotherman

As promised

Luchadores and Film Makers

Morning all. I've been busy these past two weeks working on some new projects. Here are a few shots to show you what i've been working on. I'll put more detailed posts up once i've sorted through all the pictures.

Jane Mason portraits

Some portraits I shot of Jane during the making of the film.

Jeff Harris 4,748 self-portraits

Photographer Jeff Harris has taken a self portrait every day since 1999. In the time since the project began Jeff has always taken time out in the day to take an image.
The pictures form a visual diary of his life over the past 12 and a half years.
The project forced him to actively seek new things to do in order to make his work more interesting.
This story is really inspiring for anyone who makes excuses for not taking pictures, which I am also guilty of. It also shows how photography can be used to help people through difficult circumstances.

Hope you enjoy the video and Jeff's website can be found here

Video originally seen on fstoppers.com

Yasmin

A recent shoot I did with my friend and model Yasmin Thornbur.
Expect to see more when I relaunch my website in the new year.

Pull apart

One of my polaroids shot on the Automatic 100. Shot on Fuji fp100b film.
Nice!