Skegness

Skengess...commonly thought of as the arsehole of england. An opinion I can now whole heartedly agree with...only kidding. But it certainly is an 'interesting place', I only had the pleasure of seeing it for two days from the confines of the surreal Butlins holiday camp that I was incarcerated in. It's fascinating how they've tried to offset the general mundane and bleak surroundings with the garish amusement arcades with names such as 'Sun City', there strange contradictions to be found round every corner. I soon relaised that the tv sit-com 'Phoenix Nights' wasn't a parody but a reality, even the man in the bingo hall sounded the same. No wander the great British public head off to Spain these days. Poor spanish. But at least it means there's a great sit-com just waiting to be made.

The Ring

Theatre company shoot

This bizarre looking shoot was for a theatre company that had play written and acted by kids, well teenagers, for adults. Was meant to look a bit dark sinister and twisted.

Film set shoot

These were some shots I did on a film set, in the dark room of fotofusion in Brixton. It was for a short being directed by Rob Brown.

Boot Camp Nation - Sofi Langis

Here's a snap of myself, Sofi Langis and Andrew Wander. Sofi Langis is a talented young, director, producer and documentary maker from Canada. In the summer she worked along side my friend Andrew on one of her latest documentaries on the IDF in Israel and the concept of mandatory service. I shot stills for the documentary and I think appear in it a few times. She was over in London the other day having flown in from Tel Aviv having put some final touches to it. It should be out within the next few months and I recommend you see it - it certainly picks up on an interesting element often overlooked from the problems in the Middle East. She's definately one to watch...

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must upgrade...

I really want to upgrade my cameras and equipment-looking to get the 5D and finally the decent Canon 24-70...problem is I don't have any money. So I have to sell all my equipment just to get a bit of the new stuff...which will for a short time leave me camera-less. which can't happen. So I'm going to have to think about it long and hard, but I met a friend today who'd flown back in from putting the finishing touches to documentary that I shot some stills for in the middle east, and hopefully we'll be collaborating again in the future...but to do so I need better equipment. I know deep down that this isn't strictly true...but I still think it needs to be done.

VII Seminar 2007

Managed to get along to the VII seminar in London which was held over two days at the Royal Geographic Society. Absolutely fascinating stuff, and amazing to see and hear these photographers in the flesh talking about their work and seeing stuff you wouldn't normally get to see. James Nachtwey has almost become a celebrity in his own right which is a bit ridiculous and is not down to any fault of his own. Obviously with anything involving photographers there were loads of people snapping away-it must have been something very wierd for them-the photographers having the cameras turned on them for once. Still it was very inspirational and at the same time demoralising for someone such as myself who has contemplated trying to get into such a rapidly changing form of career. To have the dedication of someone like Chris Morris (whose book My America, will be a defining historical narrative of one side of the Bush administration), or to have the fantastic eye for colour such as Jaochim Ladefoged, would be amazing but for me perosnally very unlikely. In the picture above is Nachtwey being caught on a mobile phone.

Canary Wharf

testing testing....1....2....3

As you can see been keeping myself busy with studio shoots (er...bedroom studio shoots) , these were shot earlier today. Paid work as been few a far between over the past few weeks so been taking the chance to build my fashion portfolio with a few testing shoots. Big thanks go to Yasuhiro Fuji for hair styling, Andriani Vasiliou for make up, Jo Freeman for modeling and Sandra Bamminger at House of Boing for the outfits. As always with testing everyone including me was working for nothinbg and they all did an excellent job! Busy weekend with the VII seminar being held in London (back to the world of photojournalism) and some more gallery openings at the beginning of next week. Then hopefully some more paid work....broke again.

Website update

Big big thanks have to go out my flatmate, Naresh Verlander, who even though snowed under with other work, managed to a fairly major update on the website with new gallery pages being added, I've also updated some of the images and the gallery style. Seeing as I've been doing a lot of fashion recently I have a new fashion gallery so that I can keep the people section more for portraits etc etc. Any feedback welcome.