One blustery Saturday winter morning a few months ago I packed up my camera gear and headed to the beautiful Welsh coastline to the amazing little Llanddwyn island in Anglesey with my good buddies and incredible band The Mekkits to shoot some images for their upcoming album.

The lads had specified that they wanted one image for the inside of the inlay card of the album and that they would all be dressed in togas (explanation coming up!) by the sea, but other than this they were really relaxed about exactly how the images would work out and were happy to take on board any ideas and see what happened on the day! As a creative bunch themselves they had lots of their own ideas too so together we just pooled our ideas, played around with them and rampaged all over the island for an hour! The results are below, and the one they ended up going with for the album is the title image above, also choosing one of the others below for a gig poster.

They are releasing their debut double-sided album titled Pompeii/Vesuvius on Monday 28th May 2012, so the Ancient Roman album title inspired the togas, which they also used for their first video release from the album, Brave Little Boy (easily the most insane video I have seen for quite some time, love it!) On that day they also filmed a video for another song from the album, End of the World Blues, and I took some documentary behind-the-scenes pictures of this as it was EPIC! I don’t want to give too much away but it involved the ocean and waterproof camera housing…! The video is being released in a week or two, so I’ll blog these images with a link to the video as soon as it comes out – it will be well worth seeing I promise!

The shoot was a challenge for me photographically, as I’d not done a proper band shoot as such before, any music photography I’ve done before has been completely documentary. So faced with five strapping lads to direct I was really nervous that I’d be able to do a good job for them. Added to this was the fact that due to the image being for an inlay card, the final image had to have a 2:1 side ratio, so it was an extra consideration cropping the top and bottom off the image in my head whilst shooting to make sure that it would work in a more panoramic format. But it was SUCH good fun and one of my favourite days at work ever. The lads are so much fun, easy-going, creative and patient. Despite being stood in a Welsh winter wearing nothing but a sheet, they trampled around barefoot all over the place, over sharp rocks, rough undergrowth and even in the freezing Atlantic ocean.

Please do go and check them out – they are absolutely brilliant and are holding an epic album launch party on Friday 25th May 2012 in the St. Philip with St. Stephen Church in Salford, Manchester. You can buy tickets here and each ticket purchase buys you entry to the gig itself, plus entry to the after-party in the Northern Quarter, PLUS a copy of the double-album on the night. Hard to argue with that really! If you need any more persuasion, check out their amazing reviews – very well deserved praise.

Amazing lads, amazing musicians and most importantly to me, amazing friends. I can’t wait for the launch gig and am so excited to see the culmination of all their hard work – they really do deserve all the recognition and support they can get. Love them!

First of all, I’d like to make a HUGE apology. For various reasons I’ve been beyond terrible at blogging over the last couple of months and I know I’ve posted very little. So please let me reassure you that this is the start of regular blogging again and I promise I’ll have lots of new stuff up here on a regular basis from now on (including the backlog and reinstatement of my Self-portrait 52 project – shamefully delayed but definitely not abandoned!) And to begin with, I really wanted to start this new leaf with a bang and post something as good as I can give you – this is a shoot I love to pieces…..

Beth and Jonny are getting married in a couple of months time. They met on the school bus and have been inseparable ever since (altogether now… aaaahhhh!) Beth thought it would be a great idea to have their engagement shoot at their old school seeing as this is where they met and their love blossomed! It was an absolutely brilliant idea and this has ended up being one of my favourite shoots of all time. In true Lancashire style, it rained incessantly all afternoon so we had to do the whole shoot indoors, but it really didn’t matter – the school as a location was absolutely incredible and we had a great time taking photographs all over the place – at the lockers, on the stairs, in the classrooms, in the corridor, music room, library, art room, D&T workshop, sports hall and canteen… it was an absolute blast.

Beth and Jonny were a total dream to photograph. Despite being absolutely drop-dead gorgeous, they genuinely didn’t seem to realise this at all, were both really shy about being photographed and were pretty much physically shaking with nerves when the shoot began. But they were absolutely fantastic – they were really up for throwing themselves into it and totally got what I was trying to do with each shot, relaxed into it in no time, and were just the sweetest people from start to finish. They are such lovely warm people, completely adorable together, totally crazy about each other and I really can’t wait to see them get married in a couple of months. Thanks Beth and Jonny for a total belter of an afternoon at work.

This weekend just gone was my first wedding of 2012, and it was with the lovely Jemma and Will, such a great couple to kick off the year with! We met up a few weeks ago in London for their engagement shoot, dodged the raindrops and had a good giggle. Here are a few of my favourites. Hope you guys are enjoying yourselves on honeymoon!

I’ve been really missing my From Our Hearts girls more than usual this week – we’re really overdue a get together and with Debs now based in Australia for part of the year, we’re all just that little bit further apart than we have been in the past. We all email and chat on a pretty much daily basis so they never feel too far away, but nothing compares to when we all manage to get together face to face and have a little break away from everything else.

Missing them this week gave me the momentum needed to get my arse in gear and FINALLY edit the pictures I took in early autumn (in the middle of that beautiful Indian Summer) when we all got together at Joanna’s beautiful cottage in the Sussex countryside. As always, my cheeks hurt from laughing pretty much solidly for 3 days and it was a wonderful chance to breathe, re-energise, chat shop, have fun and relax after a crazy peak wedding season.

We spent our time lolling around Joanna’s cottage in our PJs, drinking tea (LOVE Jo’s paint chart tea-colour selector), eating eggs fresh from her chickens, having candelit barbeques and perhaps getting a bit worse for wear on occasion (some very cringeworthy pics and video footage of me and Joanna drunkenly raiding her photobooth box have thankfully never surfaced, for this I am very grateful). We spent an amazing day lazily scouring Arundel for bric a brac (or ‘old shit’ as Emma’s Pete likes to call it), including a lengthy visit to the most amazing vintage camera shop I’ve ever seen (we all came away with lots of goodies….), as well as a couple of little photographic trips to the beach and some amazing cornfields.

It is actually a miracle that Joanna and I made it through this little holiday in one piece…. stargazing, wrapped in blankets, lying in the middle of a country road at midnight (Joanna: “Don’t worry, cars NEVER come down here…”) turned out not to be a great idea when a car did indeed come down there at great speed, driver no doubt disturbed by the sight of two blanketed weirdos in his headlights, frantically picking up candles in teacups and other nonsense from the middle of the road …

Love these girls so much…. Debs, Joanna and Emma you fill me with joy every time I see you.

Happiness is….. a lazy autumn weekend a few months ago…. beautiful Welsh coastline, friends, family, kids, dogs, cameras, tents, love and the ocean…

I met Karla a few years ago at a Rhubarb Rhubarb photography seminar in London; we instantly hit it off and have stayed in touch ever since, often helping each other out with photography business-related advice – Karla is a very talented photographer herself – check out her pics here. Karla got in touch a month or so ago as she needed some business portraits doing – I knew it would be a great couple of hours and wasn’t wrong – she is so much fun and so sweet, a real pleasure to photograph – not to mention totally hot, I’m sure you’ll agree! Not even a very soggy central Manchester could dampen Karla’s infectious and totally beautiful smile and we spent a great couple of hours wandering about and having a good old chinwag at the same time. Here are some of my favourites…

Un-du-late: To have a wave-like appearance or form

A bit nerve-wracking to do this one – my first nude! It was nice to be able to incorporate my new rib tattoo – making sure that 12 hours of pain wasn’t for nothing!

Week 5/52: SPACEDUST (suggested by Joanne Jefford)

This one was loads of fun to do. ‘Spacedust’ immediately made me think of glitter so I grabbed a big tube of gold glitter out of Joe’s art and craft box, smothered my face in moisturiser to make my face a bit sticky and then coated my whole face in glitter (have always wanted to do this!) Once I’d taken the photo, I then selected the bottom half of the image (my cheek and nose) where there are no features, just glitter, copied this and laid it as a new layer over the original photo, increasing the size so it covered the whole image, then adjusted the opacity so that the original image showed through and the opaque glittery layer acted as a dusty texture over the top. It took me days to fully get rid of all the glitter!

Week 4/52: BICYCLE (suggested by Gemma Williams)

Initially I wanted to use the spokes of a bike to make some sort of pattern but after a few unsuccessful attempts I had to give up on that idea as it just didn’t work (or at least I couldn’t get it to work!) In the end I decided to take inspiration from the movement of a bike’s wheels going round and round, set my camera on a long exposure (approx 1.5 seconds) and quickly rotated the camera around 360 degrees in front of me, leaving it still in front of me for a little longer to make the upright version of my face show through a little more. It produced some really strange colours and swirls – none of these are photoshopped, it was all created in-camera. All I really needed to do in post-processing was to increase the clarity in Lightroom to bring out my features a little sharper, and to use the Burn tool in Photoshop to emphasise my eyes. I really like the end result, even if I do look like some kind of creepy psychotic ghost!

Week 3/52: WHIZZPOP (suggested by Claire Scanlon)

Right, so week 3’s word was really no easier than the first two terrors! Claire suggested the rather wonderful word ‘Whizzpop’, which, as many of you will know, comes from the legendary Roald Dahl’s The BFG (Big Friendly Giant). A wonderful word – yes. An easy self-portrait word – no. For those of you unfamiliar with ‘whizzpopping’ here is a little excerpt from The BFG where the BFG gives Sophie some frobscottle, a giant’s fizzy drink where the bubbles move downwards instead of upwards:

“With frobscottle,” Sophie said, “the bubbles in your tummy will be going downwards and that could have a far nastier result.”
“Why nasty?” asked the BFG, frowning.
“Because,” Sophie said, blushing a little, “if they go down instead of up, they’ll be coming out of somewhere else with an even louder and ruder noise.”
“A whizzpopper!” cried the BFG, beaming at her. “Us giants is making whizzpoppers all the time! Whizzpopping is a sign of happiness. It is music in our ears!” [...] He removed the cork and took a tremendous gurgling swig.
“It’s glummy!” he cried. “I love it!”
For a few moments, the Big Friendly Giant stood quite still, and a look of absolute ecstasy began to spread over his long wrinkly face. Then suddenly the heavens opened and he let fly with a series of the loudest and rudest noises Sophie had ever heard in her life [...] But most astonishing of all, the force of the explosions actually lifted the enormous giant clear off his feet, like a rocket.

Now, call me prudish, but I really felt there was very little I could do or would want to do to pursue in images the flatulent element of ‘whizzpopping’. But the shooting up into the air like a rocket was something I felt I could work with…. hence this week’s self-portrait. Hope you like it!

Week 2/52: GLOCKENSPIEL (suggested by Tom Mason)

Another stinker of a word for this second week – glockenspiel??!! An image of me playing a glockenspiel wasn’t really feasible, partly because I don’t own one any more and partly because I just couldn’t think of how to make it into a particularly interesting self-portrait. So I started thinking about the different qualities of a glockenspiel and after a few dead-end trains of thought involving music and sound I finally decided to go with the shape of the keys as a starting point – the straight strips like slats with the gaps between. I had originally planned to paint strips onto my own body (god knows how this would have turned out!) but then Adam suggested thinking about light shining through the gaps, which I loved (thereby also redeeming himself after the chicken nugget suggestion last week…) So here is the end result…

Week 1/52: NUGGET (suggested by Theresa Furey)

Nugget??!!! Bloody nugget???!!! A tricky one to start off with, thanks Theresa haha! After a couple of hours of wondering what on earth I could do with this, and a few unhelpful suggestions from my fella (“What about one of you eating a chicken nugget?”) I ended up thinking about gold nuggets, and this ring of mine popped into my head. Thank you so much Theresa for being my first ‘boss’!

INTRO:

Ok so new year, new personal project!

Last year I absolutely loved doing my 365 project and one thing it has made me vow to do is always to have at least one personal project running. So the end of 2011 and the arrival of 2012 meant out with the old, in with the new, and a new personal project needed to be devised.

To decide what to do, I reviewed how I felt about 2011’s 365 project, to try to work out what worked really well for me and what didn’t work so much, and came up with the following conclusions:

What I liked:

• FREEDOM – being able to photograph absolutely anything
• PLEASURE – rediscovery of passion and enjoyment of shooting just for myself
• DISCIPLINE –  having to produce images on a regular basis
• CREATIVITY – challenge of trying to present objects and feelings in an interesting way
• THERAPEUTIC OUTLET – channel of expression for personal feelings
• VARIETY – the range of different kinds of images produced

What I didn’t like so much:

• DAILY TASK – the challenge of producing an image every day became pretty onerous as the months went on and as a result I felt like I was going through the motions a little on some days and resented the project
• SUBJECTS – many days I felt like I was being very unimaginative and often ended up just photographing objects and items. I would have liked to have included more portraiture in the project.
• LACK OF TECHNICAL CHALLENGE – it was challenging creatively in terms of finding the subjects and thinking about how to present them, but it wasn’t particularly technically challenging
• FAILURE OF SELF-PORTRAIT PROJECT – this really bothers me, I can’t stand not seeing something through to the end! I intended this to run alongside the 365 project and in the early months I really got into it and felt that I was making progress, but it kind of floundered around April time and ended up just being absorbed into the 365 project. In retrospect I think it’s better for me to concentrate on just one project at a time.
• DOCUMENTATION – most of my professional work is very much documentary – I respond to what is going on at the time and document it in the way that I see it. In this respect, the 365 project was mostly the same as this – documenting things that happened on that day. It would be nice to create some images that do not aim to document, but that are more artistic and conceptual, as this is something that I have done far less of and would like to experiment with.
• TOO MUCH CONTROL – I enjoyed the freedom of choosing what to photograph, but often it felt as though I had almost too much choice and lack of focus. Having so much control over potential subject matter actually made me lazy rather than sharp. It would have been nice to have the kick up the backside of working creatively to someone else’s brief and direction.
• NO CLEAR LINK BETWEEN IMAGES – although I loved the variety of images in the project, I would like to produce a set of images that are varied but have a more coherent and tight link between them.

How this informed the new 2012 project:

• Weekly rather than daily photo
• More technical challenge
• Handing some of the control over to others
• Conceptual work rather than documentary
• Clear and specific brief
• Personal focus
• Images that are varied but still coherent as a set

Sooooo….. I came up with….

SELF-PORTRAIT 52!

Brief:
PRODUCE ONE SELF-PORTRAIT PER WEEK, EACH WORKING TO A SPECIFIC THEME SUGGESTED BY A READER

I felt that the weekly timescale is both less onerous after a year of daily photos, but also gives me time to really think each image through and produce something more polished and carefully crafted. Doing self-portraits ticks lots of boxes for me – it enables me to make up for the abandoned 2011 self-portrait project, and throws me a much greater technical challenge as they are really bloody tricky to do! It also provides a clear coherent theme throughout all the different pictures and keeps a personal and portraiture focus to the project. Getting the themes from readers also ticks lots of boxes – it makes the project more interactive – it’s always more fun to do things with other people! It removes some of the control from me and hands it over to others, making sure that I don’t get lazy. Using a different reader each week injects lots of variety to the project and having a specific theme to work to makes each image conceptual rather than documentary and gives me a clear focus.

When I asked for the random words from people on facebook and twitter, it was to get the year’s themes! I didn’t want to say what it was for as I thought this might influence people’s choice of words, making them think of outcomes rather than starting points. I also thought it would be more challenging for me this way as I knew I would get lots of really obscure and tricky words rather than typical ‘theme’ words which might have been suggested if people had know what they were for. Looking at the weird and wonderful words suggested I’m now wondering if this was a good idea haha! I took every single one down (other than having to censor Pete Smyth’s filthy suggestion, no surprises there!) and will work through them strictly in the order they were suggested, choosing just one word from each reader where more than one were given, so that each week is directed by someone different. This produced 49 words, and for the last 3 I chose my favourites from the extras that people had submitted. Thank you so much everyone who chipped in, I really appreciate you helping me to get the project off the ground!

So, without further ado… the first image of project Self-Portrait 52……

This is one of those weddings where I have so much to say about it but I really do think that the people in the pictures speak louder than words. I challenge any of you to get to the end of this blog post and a) not get choked up about how Miriam and Stephen look at each other, b) not fall in love with Miriam, or c) not want to be friends with almost everyone there.

Miriam and Stephen’s cinema date engagement shoot was one of my favourite engagement shoots ever, and their wedding was one of my favourite weddings ever. They are both unbelievably warm, funny, radiant people who immediately draw you in and make you feel like you’ve known them for years. They are quite simply two of the sweetest, most genuine people I’ve ever met, and their friends and family are very much cut from the same cloth. Throw a huge amount of these kind of people into one place and what results was pretty much a dream job for me – the whole day just oozed with love, laughter, warmth and personality.

In typical Lancashire fashion, it rained relentlessly all day, and we weren’t even able to step foot outside for any couple shots, which was a real shame. But it didn’t dampen anyone’s spirits one little bit, and thanks to the people in them, to me these pictures are some of the most sunshiny images I’ve ever taken. Miriam and Stephen had gone to a huge effort to keep their friends and family happy and entertained throughout the day, with loads of fun games and distractions going on all the time. It’s so clear to see what a blast everyone had, and I was constantly spoilt for choice with fun things to photograph.

Days like this and people like this are what I do this job for. Thank you so much Miriam and Stephen for letting me share a little bit of your warmth. You’re ace.

A few weeks ago over Christmas, I spent a really enjoyable hour with the lovely Laura and her beautiful two children, Oscar and brand new baby Amelie. First we had great fun racing around the back garden with Oscar and his cousin, then we snuggled up warm in the house. A totally lovely way to spend a winter morning, here are some of my favourites…

Alice and David’s engagement shoot at Yorkshire Sculpture Park was one of my favourite engagement shoots of the year, and their wedding in a beautiful village in Devon was lovely. The whole shebang took place in the same little village – from getting ready at Alice’s parents’ house to the church ceremony to the marquee reception at the village hall. The village was dotted with cute little signposts and everyone walked from place to place.

The gorgeous blue and white themed marquee and village hall were full of beautiful handmade details and I loved their cheese cake with a little replica of David’s vintage car on top. I also particularly liked that David had a ‘best woman’ as well as a best man, and she looked amazing in her suit!

Props also to Alice and David for being officially the most swung-around couple! I really loved that David picked Alice up and swung her round in the church ceremony (this hardly ever happens in churches – in fact I don’t think I’ve ever seen it happen before!) and their first dance had the most impressive swinging around I think I have ever seen at a wedding ever! Such a fun and loved-up couple and a really great day. Here are some of my favourites…