The Jeckyl & Hyde of Photography

Professional Photographer recently called me the "Jekyll & Hyde of photography" due to the variety of work I do; one day photographing cute kids, weddings or corporate events, the next day shooting dirty tattooed rockstars. It's a tag I'm more than happy to have as I love the mixture of jobs that I find myself undertaking. And this week has seen me living up to that name-tag as much as ever. In the past week I've done a job for Jaguar cars, a lifestyle shoot with 6-month old Layla, a makeover for Live 24-Seven mag and an array of great bands. Here are a few of my favourites..

Aiden @ Birmingham Academy


Bring Me The Horizon @ Birmingham Academy


Gallows @ Birmingham Academy



Layla


Machine Head @ Birmingham NEC


Rise Against @ Birmingham Academy


Trivium @ Birmingham NEC



Makeover - Before and After



The Used @ Birmingham Academy


Arch Enemy @ Birmingham NEC


Jaguar Cars




The Hives @ Birmingham Academy



It has to be said that I feel like a lot of gigs I've shot recently have had terrible lighting for photography - lots of backlight and dark faces. The Hives changed all that though! All the gigs were great in their own way with Machine Head being a highlight for me.

This week saw Elliott getting his first taste of solid food. I think the picture says it all!


Evelyne and I also found time to sort through all our wedding photos and select our faves to put online for our friends & family. We're really pleased with the pictures and are going to be able to create a great album when we have a bit more spare cash. Here's another image from the day..


Sadly, one of the guests at our wedding, my Auntie Linda, passed away this weekend. It was a complete shock as she hadn't been ill and, at the wedding, seemed very much her usual self. We'll all miss her and I feel particularly sad for my Dad, my nan and Linda's husband, Maurice and their 3 kids.

Check out the work of fellow Rock Sound photographer, Steve Brown. His work involves massive amounts of Photoshop artistry but the end results are stunning. I'd love to have a go at learning similar techniques some time.

Mid-Week Chaos

A Swedish company contacted me about photographing somebody they have interviewed for a magazine out there. He's a young, successful businessman and yesterday I met him in Coventry for a very brief portrait shoot. It was all very easy really and a couple of hours later they had the images in Sweden and had emailed back saying "they are just what we're looking for". Job done!



Had a chilled evening last night watching "The Secret Millionaire", which always leaves me inspired and strangely emotional (I know, I'm a wuss), and drinking red wine. Not many nights in this week so we made the most of it.

Today promises to be a much more hectic day as I'm covering a full makeover for Live 24-Seven magazine. It includes a shopping spree, make-up, nails, hair and teeth whitening. Not a very rock & roll job but these things help pay the bills. And I more than make up for the rock & roll element this evening as I'm shooting the Taste Of Chaos gig at the Academy featuring Gallows, Aiden, Rise Against and The Used. I've been waiting ages to catch Gallows live so it'll be interesting to see how they measure up after all the hype.

Here's a photo I took of my cousin's little girl..

Heaven, Hell, Fire and Ice..

So we've had our first snowfall and it's only November! Being from Canada, Evelyne loves the snow so she's been smiling ever since the first flake fell last night. Personally, I think it's nice for about an hour and then I'm happy when it's gone again. Unless I'm planning on staying indoors that is.

It's been a good few days with 2 more gigs including Heaven and Hell (aka Black Sabbath) who were supported by the appalling Iced Earth and the mighty Lamb Of God. Both supports were loud as hell but the light was terrible for photos. Managed to get a few good ones of Lamb Of God though..



It was an honour to be shooting Heaven and Hell. I've been a Black Sabbath fan since I was about 12 years old and they put on an impressive show in their home town. The gig was nowhere near sold out which was a shame. Here's some photos..



On Friday I was back at the Academy to shoot Alexisonfire, Saosin and The Ghost Of A Thousand. Both supports played in white light, which was weird, and then Alexisonfire played in virtual darkness save for a little back lighting, meaning great shots were hard to come by. The bands were good except Saosin who really were shockingly bad with their whiney emo mush.

Alexisonfire




Saosin


The Ghost Of A Thousand


After the gig a bunch of us went to the opening of our mates' new club night, Off The Hook meets Cold Rice, where our friends Copter played another wicked set. The club itself wasn't too busy, which was a shame as it's a great little venue. It didn't help that it was very cold in there but a good night was had by all and it was good meeting up with a few familiar faces, including my ex-girlfriend who spoke to me for the first time since we broke up over 5 years ago!

Set up a new page advertising my services to local bands. I do promo shoots at a reduced rate and have already had new enquiries since setting up the new page. Click Here for more..

Architects' manager called asking to use my picture of the band for a Kerrang! magazine poster. It's been an ambiton of mine to get published in Kerrang! (I've bought the mag since Issue 1!) so having a poster is pretty damn cool. Here's the picture..


On a sadder note, showed Lou & Brad the images from their wedding from last month. It was an emotional viewing as Lou's mother passed away last week, so the photos of her from the wedding predictably caused a few tears. I got some lovely photos of the bride and her mom together and it's nice to know how much they'll mean to her.

Here's an image from Rosie & Matt's pre-wed shoot. They get married December 29th..

Shooting with The Enemy

Spent a big part of the weekend working through Scott Kelby's great new book The 7-Point System for Adobe Photoshop CS3. It's such a great idea for a book and I've learned more from it than any other Photoshop book so far. And I haven't even read half of it yet! As well as working on the images that come as part of the lessons in the book, I've tried some of the techniques on my own images and got some great results. His ideas for addng some punch to the colours in images work brilliantly.

After reading part of the book I went through my shots of The Arcadian Kicks from a recent shoot. Here's a couple of my favourites..



I also finished another of my images from Brett Harkness' Winter weddings seminar..


With a few new techniques from Mr Kelby, together with my lovely new Mac Pro, I'm enjoying working in Photoshop more than ever and Evelyne has to drag me away from the computer when she needs me! It's about time we had a full day off actually so i'm thinking of fun things we can be doing with Elliott that won't be affected by this cold weather. He has a bit of a cold at the moment so we need to stay in the warm really. Plus, I'm a wuss when it comes to the cold! :)

Last night I did brave the cold to head back over to the Birmingham NEC to shoot Stereophonics and The Enemy, both of which were pretty good. It's weird seeing The Enemy on such a big stage considering it's less than a year since I shot them in a working men's club in Coventry for the NME. They had a few mates there but otherwise it was just blokes drinking on a Sunday afternoon. They sat through the band's set politely, but seemed pleased when it was all over. Since then The Enemy have had a number 1 album and have sold over 6000 tickets for a gig next april in Coventry's Ricoh Arena. Fair play boys!

Here's a picture of Kelly from Stereophonics last night..

You can see my review of the gig HERE

Been listening to the new Dilinger Escape Plan album "Ire Works" and it's immense. I've never paid much attention to them before but I'm a convert.

I'm also listening to a lot of Lamb Of God before photographing them tomorrow opening for Heaven & Hell aka Black Sabbath with Ronnie James Dio. It's a weird choice for support so I'll be interested to see how they go down with that audience.

Here's a photo of Evelyne and Elliott when they dressed up as smurfs for Hallowen a couple of weeks back. Super cute!

Return Of The Mac

So, after months of badgering from Mr Tony Hackett, together with constant reminders from my PC that it couldn't keep up with my workflow, I finally bit the bullet and invested 3 grand in a Mac Pro with 23" monitor. And I have to say it's fanbloodytastic! Since installing it a week ago I have not once sat for more than a second or two waiting for something to happen. Images in Lightroom open instantly (as opposed to something like 20 seconds on the PC) and using 2 screens is great too. Having had an Apple laptop for a few years now, the transition has been a particularly smooth one and I can't see me moving back to PC ever.

Having such a fast workflow now (7GB of RAM helps!) means I've managed to catch up on lots of work and even went back to my photos from the V Festival and found I had some great images that I almost forgot about. Here's just a few..

Damien Rice

Iggy Pop

Lily Allen

Rilo Kiley


Stumbled across a website featuring some of Jerry Ghionis' work from a Paris wedding. These photos just prove yet again what an artist that man is and I can't wait to spend 5 days in his company in London next June.



If we were rich I'm sure we would have flown Jerry over for our own wedding.

Speaking of Cornish weddings, all the pictures from Nicky & John's wedding in Newquay are ready to go and I'm really pleased with the results. I was only the second shooter on this wedding, assisting Karen Newall who was heavily pregnant. She just had a baby boy so congrats to her. Here's my fave image from that wedding..


As the nights draw in it becomes trickier and trickier capturing weddings in great light so on Monday, Evelyne and I spent the day with Brett and Kristie Harkness who dispensed some great advice on how to deal with winter weddings. In the afternoon we visited the Lowry in Manchester and got to photograph some brides and grooms using flash, video light and any other light we could find. Here are my fave pictures that I got on the day...


It was interesting to visit Brett & Kristie's studio up in Milnrow too. It's a converted barn at the end of a quiet street and they've done it up brilliantly with tons of great images around the walls. It's reinforced mine and Evelyne's desire to have something similar for ourselves and we're starting to look for potential places in Birmingham. We're not in any rush so we'll wait til we find somewhere perfect that we can really make it our own.

Tony and I popped over to the NEC Tuesday to catch the Foo Fighters gig. I was meant to shoot it but was let down by the record company rep at the last minute. It's partly my own fault as I did leave it til this week to apply for the pass. Must be better organised in future. Anyway, the gig was enjoyable enough but for me there's something missing from Foo Fighters' music that would make them truly special. Dave Grohl's a great frontman but their songs are just a little on the predictable side for me. It would have been good to photograph the gig but a friend of mine is trying to arrange for me to shoot their Nottingham gig next week so we'll see.

Wednesday was the Ben Sherman party in Birmingham and Fused Mag asked me to cover the event for them. Free drinks always guarantees people turn up to these things and ex-Specials frontman Terry Hall played a DJ set too. He looked thoroughly bored by the whole event. Here's some pics..



Evelyne and Elliott are off to Montreal on Boxing Day for 2 weeks. So we had to get a passport for a 3 month old. It's tough getting a suitable photo that will satisfy the authorities these days but Elliott was a star and posed for the camera beautifully.

While we were there we got one of the whole family for my wallet..