New site new home

After 3 years of calling blogger my home I am moving my blog over to my brand new website. I'll leave this blog active for as long as it stays up but any future posts will be over at:
www.welcometothedarkslide.co.uk

I've also started up a tumblr which is over at:
zomtographer.tumblr.com

Thank you to everyone who has read my blog I hope at the very least you've found it entertaining!

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.

Unearthed

8 pieces of my work will be on show as part of a group exhibition title 'Unearthed' which opens Saturday June 29th. The exhibition will run until the 28th of July and takes place at The Woolhouse, Town Quay, Southampton, SO14 2AG.
The show features the work of Steph May, Peter Hunter, Tina Lane, Harriet Green, Maxine Marsh and myself. 
For more information go to: 
elementarts.co.uk

Wasting Arrows

Did a quick shoot for Wasting Arrows the other night and had the pleasure of hearing their new recording plus some other tracks they are getting ready to record.

Check them out here

The hawk has landed

So here is the video in all its finished glory.
And don't forget to send the band your love by joining their mailing list over at their website.
The track is available for free download via the site too.

Curxes Further Still Video Exclusive

If you would like to see what we've been hard at work on over the past month and a half, head on over to Beat Magazine as they are playing host to the online premiere of our new video for Curxes.
They also have an interview with the singer Roberta about the track and a short bit about the video.
You can expect a more in depth blog post about the making of the video over at The Red Red very soon.

In the mean time, enjoy!

Curxes

I blinked and somehow it's almost April, i've had my head down working on a few projects for a while and after a lot of planning one of them is now coming to an end. I've been working with Brighton based wizards of audio 'Curxes' shooting promo stills and cover artwork for their latest single "Further Still". Our production company The Red Red has also been shooting the video to accompany the single which will premiere exclusively on thefourohfive in the first week of april.
Keep an eye on these two, they're going to be huge.

The track is available to download for free via the bands website

Brotherman

A lot of the work we've been doing recently is finally starting to appear online so that people can finally see it. It's been a few months in the making and now it's heading off into the outside world.
The first few pieces i've worked on are two pieces of cover artwork for Brotherman. One for a free track download and the other is for The Tapes Volume 1 which will be released in the coming months by Sam Dyson at Free House Studios.
If you head over to itsbrotherman.co.uk you can see the first episode of the acoustic cipher sessions that myself and Johnny G filmed and my company The Red Red have a music video in post production for Brothermans track Piece of the pavement.

All of these good things are coming soon so watch this space!

The Move Ons

I've just spent half an hour writing a blog post and then in one fluid movement deleted it. 

That's the only problem with modern technology, when you involve a person is invariably when it goes wrong. 

I'd like to think the blog post was one of the wittier things i've ever written, but I guess no one will ever know. 

So in lieu of me trying to remember exactly how it went and then painstakingly piece it back together here is an image from a shoot I did recently featuring one half of the extremely talented band The Move Ons. 

If you haven't heard their music I would direct you to follow this link and enjoy.

Rob

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  

RELAMPAGO

Omar Lopez is an artist who has kitted out a motorbike as a travelling darkroom which he is using for his new project "Relampago", Lopez will travel around the Los Angeles area creating fictionalised interactions with strangers, posing as members of their families. In his kickstarter campaign video Lopez talks about his work, the ideas behind the project and the wet plate process which he will employ to create the images.

If you would like to see the full campaign visit his kickstarter page here

More than 28 days later

Saturday marked a momentous occasion for a lot of us. We finally got to see Zombie Resurrection up  on a big screen, sat in a cinema packed with cast, crew and family members of those involved, including my parents. Needless to say that after sitting through more swearing than an extended edition of Nil by Mouth and watching a scotsman tear a zombies spine out my parents are still talking to me.

From the left Jade Colucci, Emma Luckins, Joe Rainbow, Eric Colvin, Shamiso Mushambi, Matt de Tisi 

It was a great evening and really good to catch up with some people I haven't seen for over a year. 

Who said zombie films don't bring people together!

p.s Jade there's a picture of you on here now :-)

The Red Carpet

In just over ten days we will be attending the cast and crew screening of Zombie Resurrection, so we will all finally get to see all of our hard work up on the silver screen. From the off the film has been a family affair, the zombie hordes (on two separate days) were made up of friends and family, including Andy (our director's) mum. My parents will be attending the premiere and even though I have thoroughly prepared them for the amount of swearing and lopped off body parts they will witness, deep down I know that nothing could really prepare them. The scariest film my mum will watch is What Lies Beneath, so it'll be interesting to see if she speaks to me again after the screening.

I will also have a display of a large bulk of the promo shots I took for the film including portraits of all the zombies who kindly gave up their evening to be covered in fake blood, so I will be able to take orders for prints if you are attending the showing. 

Lord Lav on set 

Pete Lumley and Lav

 

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.

Lord of the Dead

Recently a few of us put our heads together to come up with a promotional video for Lord Lav.
The two main purposes of the video were to help Lav to crowd source funding for his debut album and also to introduce the character of Lord Lav.
Lord of the Dead is a zombie rap concept album intercut with audio scenes that run as a narrative throughout the album. If the funding campaign is successful the album will be pressed onto 12" vinyl and become a tangible collectable object for which I will be shooting the cover.
Between us we watched a lot of IndieGoGo videos, some great and some terrible to gauge what made a successful video. Our main concerns putting the video together were that it held peoples attention, was fun to watch, got the main points over as clearly as possible and that it was short enough that people wouldn't get bored whilst watching it (hopefully)
So ultimately here is the video. Let us know what you think and if you would like to contribute to Lav's campaign it currently live on IndieGoGo here

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!