Wednesday 24 February 2010

Bizz



Some nights out shooting I do for fun; for my birthday (officially 29+1) I took myself along to Skill Wizard where I saw Salute and Nebukadnezza. It was loud and fun.







Happy birthday to me. Dice Club approaches its third birthday; I wonder how many of the folks who go there really have an idea of what a slice of its time that place has been. It has never been a place to put bands on to please a crowd, and that makes it better than a lot of places. I don't always like the music but I like the idea of it; here's Joy Rides and The Vichy Government and Oli and Kane and a bunch of other folks I've got to know over the times I've been there.









One of the newcomers to the Shoreditch nightlife landscape is A Rebours; I met most of the folks involved in the night through them going to Dice Club, and now their night is generally far busier than Dice, to the detriment of the older club, as they're on the same night and five minutes from each other. I went along to say hi after Dice Club finished.




These clubs were clubs I went to out of choice; I also have something of an obligation to help folks out who have done me favours, and for that reason I ended up at the Gold Bar in Stoke Newington where John Power from Slutty Fringe was DJing.







Slutty Fringe also sent me out to shoot New Young Pony Club, but there was a mix-up with what time they were on - we presumed they'd be the headline band, but they were on first. So I got some shots of a band called Pope Joan, who aren't amazing. There was another band there too but I didn't get their name and they were awful.






Finally, Le Cool helped launch a Thai/Viet fusion restaurant, and what with there being free food, I was of course there to document the occasion. First up though, here's Le Cool's Josh Jones and Eamon Downes doing a passable impression of the Krays.



My boys! Onto the food; the restaurant is called Monsieur M. and the food is quite good. There were rice dumpling rolling classes and everything.






Sticking with Le Cool, this year we've started a collaboration with Art Below, supplying them with posters from our cover artists. Here's Matthew Green in front of his awesome piece.



For the Le Cool interview, Dark Times author Daniel Kramb:



For an interview on the Le Cool blog, Le Cool writer and now editor of her own fashion magazine (SHIRLEY), Naomi Attwood.



Sticking with the fashion theme, here's Maz from Lucha, and some shots of her for her friend who makes the flowers in her hair. Have a nice weekend.





Friday 12 February 2010

DANCE DANCE DANCE




Sorry I haven't posted for a while; I had no computer, and then work came like a storm. It has been good, but tiring, and I am looking forward to more regular but less frantic assignments. For this post I'll be concentrating on the main developments in the past six weeks or so, as while I have never set out to be a particular sort of photographer, the last month has been particularly significant for me shooting performance photography, and in particular dance. The view above is from outside Laban in Greenwich. Through my work with Slutty Fringe, I was hired by Dance 3 to shoot performance shots during tech and dress rehearsals for promotional use. It was exciting to have some say in the performance, and to have the auditorium mostly to myself. I was pretty impressed with the performances, and there's at least one team I'd like to work with again.











All in all, I got good feedback from the shots, and the folks who hired me were happy enough with them to get me for another job - shooting publicity and poster shots for Hofesh Shechter dance company. We got to use the Brighton Dome theatre as a studio, with the studio lighting they had there. It was far and away the biggest production shoot I've done for myself, although the experience of having people crowded around the laptop watching the shots as they came out is something I've experienced many times assisting Takashi. Hofesh was a lovely guy; I've not had much feedback about the shots yet but on the day they seemed pleased with them. Here's Hofesh:



Here's one of the shots they chose for the poster:



Here's some extra shots I got at the end of the poster session - we had a dance company, a stage, awesome lighting rig and a photographer, so why not?




Another significant development in the last month is that I've had a job from The Wire magazine. I got to shoot the simply outrageously good Peter Brötzmann playing live. I am not a jazz afficionado, but it was massively impressive, how he could jump into the mess of noise made by the drummer and double-bassist and somehow play something that slotted right into the sound and made it into something cohesive. Here he is listening to the double bass player freaking out, just before he steps into the eye of the storm and puts it in his pocket:



In other music-related news, I shot some promo pix for excellent people Teeth Of The Sea. They have an EP out now.



Performance is an odd thing, as introspective at its best as it is extrovert. Here's Jon Blake tying someone up; when he does it, it is a performance, without narrative, but still cohesive.



Finally, and this not for the faint-hearted, here's Sammpa and the Psycho Cyborgs doing this gory thing.





I'll try to post more regularly now I have a new computer and hopefully a bit more time.