al-overdrive-weddings.com launched

It's taken a while to find the time to organise and prepare for the new site launch, but I can finally announce that I have launched my dedicated wedding photography site - specialising in quirky and vintage inspired weddings.

There has been a stigma attached to wedding photography in the past decade, but with a new generation of empowered couples wanting 'the wedding that suits them and reflects their interests' it has provided many photographers from the areas of fashion and editorial a chance to stretch their creative wings.

I certainly enjoy shooting weddings - it's an honour to be brought in capture someone's special day, and unlike editorial or studio shoots, there is no chance to do a reshoot! As a bonsu I have found it is a very good way to keep my story telling and fast shooting/fast thinking skills honed and fresh.

The above shot is from a wedding I recently covered for a wedding photographer. Interestingly, I didn't actually feel any extra pressure on the day, even though the bride was an experienced and succesful wedding photographer herself. The only 'problem' was that she was itching to get her camera's out too and snap the guests !

you can visit the site here:

al-overdrive-weddings.com

Most of this month so far has been taken up by a mixture of shooting fashion work and various (as of yet unpublished) editorial portraits.

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Sophie Hulme (stop-motion billboard) at Selfridges.

Recently I shot my first animated billboard for upcoming designer Sophie Hulme (both Vogue and Instyle are fans of her exclusive Selfridges ranges). The brief was to shoot the bag and the animated charms (soldiers, planes and a bubble blower to name a few) for use in a dual billboard  in-store. The animation lasts for almost 2 minutes and spans both boards, with items appearing to move between the two.


Despite the scale of the technical challenge we still found time to have fun within on the shoot ; If you watch the video a couple of times you soon notice that the soldiers have their own personalities and quirks as they abseil down the designer's bag and rescue the charms. Instead of using stock images for the bubbles, we shot the bubbles live in the studio, by the end of the shoot we had discovered the secret behind blowing perfect bubbles!

As you can see from the images at the top of the blog, the animation is the focal point of the display, and was designed to catch shopper's attention as they travelled down the escalator. I am lucky to have worked with a great team on this brief and would like to credit Freya Rabet and Sophie Hulme (who managed to sneak a cameo into the animation) for their production skills and hard work, allowing us to complete the shoot in only two days.

You can see more of Sophie's designs at http://sophiehulme.com/






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Finalist in the Royal Academy of Arts 'Eyewitness' Competition

I am pleased to be able to say that my entry to the Royal Academy of Arts (RAA) 'Eyewitness' Photography competition was selected for the final judging stage of the competition. With over 5500 entries I am honoured to have made it so far, and am also taken aback by the quality of the winning submissions.

Below is what Colin Ford CBE (the Curator of Eyewitness exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts) had to say about the competition:

'It has been a delight to be involved with the Royal Academy Eyewitness competition. With such a high quality and quantity of submissions, it has been a tough decision. However, the panel feel the winning images best represent their categories and are contemporary pictures which remain true to the styles of the Hungarian photographers'.

To see the winners work please visit The royal Academy website.

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Recently Released Fashion Sets and Radio 1 Interview

Over the last year I have been enjoying shooting more and more fashion work for clients, and the above images are examples fo work I have shot over summer that the clients have now released from embargo. I'm currently working on a fun and technically difficult fashion set, which should be released early September, so keep your eyes open !

Also, a while ago Radio 1 interviewed me for a programme about tattoos and spoke to me about my role as a photographer, and the show goes live tonight at 9pm.
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Cerebral Ballzy in Terrorizer and Hevy Festival Coverage

Sometimes it is difficult to decide which shoot to pick to write a blog about, this time it is too hard to pick just one so I am going to write about two.

First off is how pleased I am with the results of the Cerebral Ballzy shoot, which was shot for Terrrorizer. The band, Cerebral Ballzy, are getting a lot of attention at the moment and play a fast, loud and hard style that reflects a lot of the early 1980's hardcore and punk. Sticking with that kind of feel we went for a fairly bleak and in-your-face shoot, with a little bit of post-processing to add some drama to the shot. i'm really happy with how the layout worked across two pages, it was initally comissioned as a single page image.

Hevy Festival is held in a zoo on the coast, and has a reputation for being good fun while showcasing a lot of new acts. The Ghost of a Thousand have played the festival before, and I've shot this band numerous times live. However, this was their final show and I wanted to document this rather poignant event. I'm glad to say the guys delivered the goods, making it easy for me to give Rock Sound a strong set of images for the magazine feature. The last photo in this blog update is the final photos of the guys as 'the band' taken, and as you can in the image, it was a fun send off.... the singer described it, "like the wake after a funeral... a bit of a party after the tears". Such a good band, RIP.

You can also see a gallery of the shots from this show here

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Tattoo Revolution Magazine Cover Revealed

You may recognise the lady on the front cover of this magazine from a previous blog blog post. If you are the tpye of person who is interested in 'behind the scenes' of a photo shoot, the previous blog post links to the magazine feature that Practical Photography did on this very shoot so you get to see everything from start to the finished product above.

The magazine feature is now out and can be found in all the usual places (WHSmiths, supermarkets, etc.) as well as direct from the magazine publisher.

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My desk in 'Photo Professional' and Slam Dunk in 'Rock Sound' Magazines.

This post is a mixture of fun, work and working fun. First off, today the latest issue of 'Photo Professional' hits the shelves. They do a light-hearted section called 'office space' where they ask a pro photographer to take a snap of their working environment and to write a brief bit about five things on the desk. It seemed like a bit of fun so I agreed. If you want to know more about what the weird looking ornament on my desk is , you'll have to buy the magazine.

Whoever said,  "Work can't be fun", was in the wrong job. 'Rock Sound' magazine sent me to Slam dunk festival to shoot a variety of the performers. The images were spread over two pages (some form slam Dunk South , and some form Slam Dunk North, where a fellow photographer shoot the other acts). It was nice to see my image of 'Reel Big fish' getting a full page! As you can probably guess from the crowd in the shot, this was taken from behind the stage, and not in the photo pit. It is becoming harder and harder these days to get good access to a band at a show, which is a shame, as this full-page shot shows exactly why getting a different angle can benefit everyone from the band and the PR to the photographer and the publication.

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Interviewed for Tattoo.tv

 

Shortly after I was lucky enough to win the UK Tattoo Industry 'Best Photographer' award for the second year in a row, Tattoo.tv contacted me and asked if I'd be happy to do an interview for their site. Since I love tattoos and the adventures my tattoo related comissions have sent me on, I agreed. Thanks to Alex for taking the time to come up with a list of interesting questions for me, it's certainly not a cut-and-paste tpye interview. If you fancy a five minute read, then click the link below. If you are a budding photographer, or have an interest in what makes my mind tick and my approach to my work, then you will hopefully find it interesting.

The full interview can be found here .

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