February Update

A lot seems to have happened since the A Day To Remember blog. Myself and Penny are still working on getting things ready for Photo Pit magazine and I've managed to shoot a couple more shows for it as well.

The first thing I shot was MiMi Soya at the Purple Turtle which was pretty cool. They've said they are interested in being involved with Photo Pit which is great. The show was good and they were so easy to photograph.

You can read more about the MiMi Soya show and see more photos on Photo Pit here.

I also got to shoot Versaemerge who were supporting We The Kings. I love VE and I've been pretty desperate to shoot them since Warped almost two years ago. They were my only regret from Warped last year. The night was pretty stressful and I could have done better with the photos but I'm happy with some of the results.

You can read more about the show and see more photos on Photo Pit here.

About two weeks ago I spent the evening with the Fuel Girls again at Proud in Camden. It was a good night and it's always nice to spend time with Teta, Vanessa and Leonie. They are a good laugh and awesome ladies. The lighting was pretty strange and the photos are pretty hit and miss but I really like a few of the shots of Teta and Leonie while they were doing their hoop routine.

The other photos of the Fuel Girls from the night are here.

Last Saturday was the first London Rollergirls season 3 bout of the year and it was great to get to be there again. Both bouts were so close and really hard hitting. There were some pretty big slams and I was pretty lucky to get a shot of Kamikaze Kitten flying although it could have been sharper.

The photos of Ultraviolent Femmes vs Harbour Grudges are here and the photos of Steam Rollers vs Suffra Jets are here

The day after the Roller Derby I went to photograph Miss Led who was being filmed doing a painting for a new Lynx campaign. It was a long day and it was lovely getting to watch Miss Led working again. We've been talking about working more closely together and I'm hoping this is the first step. I did feel a bit weird though as the person who was filming the day (Martin, from Stitch That) was very talented and professional. He had a lot of ideas of things that could be done with the video and I felt the total opposite. I felt very unproffesional and amatuerish. I was extremely worried about how the photos would come out and if they would be good enough.

You can see the video here...

There's more photos of Miss Led here and you can read more about the campaign here.

As well as doing all of this I've had to work at my day job. Between work, going out photographing and editing I'm shattered at the moment. It's been hard trying to get the photos sorted and online quickly. I feel like I'm falling behind. I've got a couple shows next week and I think I need to more organised before and after the shows.

Fuel Girl - Pacha

I got asked to come down and shoot the Fuel Girls performing at Pacha. Despite clubs being a place I'm not overly comfortable in (especially when it's not my taste in music) I went down as they were doing quite a few perfomances. It also meant I got to hang out properly with them in their dressing room.

They did five performances (two fire and aerial shows and one bar show) spread out over the night. It wasn't the easiest time I've photographed them. The club was pretty busy and as the shows were shorter (but more of them) it was hard to gage how much time I had to get the shots. The fire show was in a cage and with the crowd and security I couldn't really move around much. The second aerial show was harder as the three hoops were pretty spread out and covering them all meant lots of pushing past people as quickly as possible. The lighting was ok so I shot without flash.

The bar show was pretty cool and fun to shoot.

The photos aren't as good as they could have been but I know I can do better if there's a next time at Pacha as I know what to expect.

Sorry if this is a bit of a shit update. I'm not really sure what to write today.

You can click here for the other photos from the night.

London Tattoo Convention 2010

I spent Saturday and Sunday this week down at this years London Tattoo Convention at the Tobacco Docks thanks to the very kind Fuel Girls.

I've been pretty excited about this for a while as they were going to be performing more than the fire routine I'd seen/photographed before. I've been to the tattoo convention before and knew that it's fairly well lit as most of it's roof is glass. When I got down there on Saturday, I found out they were going to be doing a fashion show for Jane Doe which I was pretty excited about but unfortunatly the crowds were too big and I couldn't quite manage to get close enough to get a lot of decent shots. I managed to get a few which I was happy with. I decided as I was going to be there for two days that I would just stick to the stage and make sure I got their performances covered so that I was a bit less restricted the following day.

I decided to shoot a lot in colour as it was quite bright and during most of the routines they were in very bold Jane Doe latex. The fire show itself was great, as it wasn't part of a club night they had a lot longer on stage which meant that Teta did a much longer solo dance to start with. The stage was square and had crowds on all four sides which meant that the girls were quite spaced out in terms of positioning so it wasn't easy to cover them all.

As well as the fire show they also had Colette Morrow and The Amazing Ari doing aerial shows on ropes/silks. It's the first time I've properly photographer anything like this. I really enjoyed it, I think I was lucky with the glass roof and all the beams across it as it made for some really nice line work on the photos and contrasted nicely against the flowing silk/rope and their body positions. Vanessa and Teta also did aerial work alongside Ari (Teta and Ari also did a Tango/aerial routine).

The Sunday I shot some people tattooing and grabbed a couple of shots of Craig Burton being tattooed by Oliver Peck but I found it quite hard to make the photos varied and interesting. The rest of Sunday was spent catching the Fuel Girl shows again and try to catch it from different angles and get better coverage of some of the other girls.

I think the highlight of my weekend was the fact Nina Kate performed with them on the Sunday. I've been a fan of Nina Kate for a while and I think I met her once when I did a photoshoot for Rockworld TV about 3 or 4 years ago and I still regret not really knowing about Jane Doe or Nina Kate at the time. I would have loved to have done more stuff with them before they got massive.

As I covered so many performances over the two days, there are shit loads more photos on the links at the bottom.

The general shots of the convention are here.

The other Fuel Girls photos are here.

Fuel Girls - Unholy (Aug)

There seems to be a theme of disapointing photos at the moment and especially after my photos of The Fuel Girls from the Unholy club night at the Scala I really wanted another shot at taking photos of them as I knew I could do better.

Thankfully they sorted me out with a pass for Unholy again which was going to be the last one and when I turned up there were two acts on before The Fuel Girls.

One act was a guy just making random noises on some sample machines and shouting nonsense down a microphone.

The second act was equaly bizarre (especially considering it was a metal night), it was a deadly serious, non ironic Britney Spears tribute act. She looked and sounded like her but it couldn't have been more out of place if it tried.

You can see more of Britney here.

Last time the venue had kept the lights really low and thankfully the lighting was a hell of a lot better this time. I got covered in champagne more than I ever had before and although my camera was soaked, I'm really happy with the shots.

The Fuels Girls are great and I can't wait to photograph them again. Not sure if I mentioned this before but I really want to shoot their aerial act.

Hopefully the girls will like these photos especially as they are so much fun to take.

The rest of the photos of The Fuel Girls from the night are here.

Fuel Girls - Unholy

This blog is squeezing it's way in between my New York update and my Warped update which is coming.

I got a text from a friend of mine who's part of the Fuel Girls saying they would be dancing at this new club night at The Scala called Unholy and did I want to come and take some pictures. The Fuel Girls seem like a great bunch of girls and I was really pleased with my shots from the last time. It was pretty last minute but I went down and when I got there I wasn't down for a photopass but the girls managed to sort that out. I've written about the other things I've shot at the place so I knew what the lighting was like so I was pretty prepared.

When I got in the place was pretty quiet. I'm sure thats mostly down to it being the first night and the fact it was the day before a festival in London. Despite it not being packed the Fuel Girls still killed it. I love their use of fire despite it being really hard to shoot. The one frustrating thing was that person doing the lighting seemed to think that because they used fire it would be wise to turn all the lights virtually out. That mixed with the fact that they spend a lot of time on the barrier with the crowd and there was no decent lighting for that. I had to have the shutterspeed right on the limit of what I can get away with which meant there's a slight motion blur in a lot of the picture and a lot of them are grainier than I would normally like them. I don't think they are as good as others I've shot there but I'm hoping that although they aren't techinically great, that their energy comes through.

Needless to say I got covered in multiple types of alcohol and liquid but it's all worth it.

Thank you Fuel Girls.

I *might* be shooting Hearts Under Fire twice on sunday then Gallows all in the same day. Fingers crossed it all works out ok.

You can see the other Fuel Girl photos here.