Lake Mellisani, Kefalonia

Awesome. There was something very goonies about this place

Whipping up a storm...

Well when I got in late last night there was a great storm brewing out at sea, giving me the perfect view from my hotel balcony. I ran down to the car through the thundering rain to get my tripod and back up to my room, only then remembering that I also needed my cable release. Back to the car I went, quickly getting drenched before scampering once again back up to the room. Of course by the time I'd done all this palaver the storm had died down, and all got was one measley picture. However as luck would have it the heavens opened once more today, and this time my faffing was kept to a mimimum and I managed to get some shots. The only downside is that doing the long exposure at night time made me realise how many hot pixels I have on my sensor, lots of little red, green, blue dots all over my pictures. All the exposure swhere pretty much guess work - I left my aperture around f/10 because I found at f/22 the lightning streak wouldn't show up, ISO was about 400 for the night shots. Anyway the shots are above, the last shot was me earlier in the day whilst the storm was still brewing.

Greek Easter celebrations

Altitude revisited...

Comic Marcus Brigstocke persuades me it would be a good idea to board down a black run behind him whilst taking pictures...hmmm. Ended up 'leap-frogging' down the slopes in order to get the pics.
Comic Phil Jupitus on stage at Altitude festival doing one of his famous improv shows...very very funny.
Dub Pistols perform at the opening of the Altitude Festival

Also got some work in one of in last weeks Guardian G2's and this piece online at skiclub.co.uk

Kafelonia update

Day 2: Attacked by the sheep, survived.

Goodbye grey skys, hello blue...

So on from snowy Meribel and on to sunny Kafelonia – I arrived here yesterday for a two week job, having had just about enough time in London to sort me out with a new laptop (I converted to mac and am still undecided on that decision…), repair my flash and get my i-pod replaced. For my flash repair I went to trusty fixation which is near Vauxhall station in Kennington and is a must for any London based photographer who wants to buy, rent or repair equipment (although it can be a bit hard not to spend money in there on all their funky gear). The flash was repaired in 15mins whilst I waited and they only charged me for the part (after I’d offered to buy the part and repair it myself). Thoroughly recommend them. Last week in Meribel

The Mac - My main problems with the mac are my fault. First being compatibility. For a start my graphics tablet won’t work on a mac which means another expense, but perhaps more annoyingly (because its so obvious) my hardrives formatted as they are for PCs can be read but not written to. This obviously makes editing old work a pain because re-edited images can’t be saved to the same folder let alone the same drive. D’oh. Apart from that the 13inch macbook upgraded to 4GB of RAM seems to be pretty nifty and far more portable than my old computer. It will just take a bit of getting used to using as I’ve been on PCs for so long.

This week along with my hire car in Kafelonia

Beginning to get used to packing for work abroad now – once again using the peli case, whilst putting my backpack and tripod in my main luggage bag for the hold. Carry on with the peli case, book and camera with the biggest lens I’ve got to keep the weight down. Still, I had a three hour wait in Athens airport and I’m beginning to think they should make free WiFi in airports mandatory – that way we have something to do rather than spend money in over priced tat shops.

More rider shots...

This was one of the shots I got before I trashed my flash. I found a bunch of British guys hitting this bench in a trail that runs down from Mottaret to Meribel, it was towards the end of the day so I set up some flashes and started shooting (well I'd been boarding with my light stands all day so I was damned if I was going to go home empty handed). The only problem was that there was heavy snow that was soaking everything - plastic bags on the flashes kept them fairly safe but I was worried about my 5D quitting in the moisture. It held out, and this is one of the sets from a group that I got. Lesson learned - need more powerful flashes and bigger plastic bags (...oh and a team of assistants)

Trashed and flashed...

First my laptop, then my ipod and now this... =(

Brandon Block

Some quick shots of DJ Brandon Block during the Altitude Festival, Meribel, France

Riders

Eman Robert, 26, Pro snowboarder

Damien Henzelin, 25, Pro Swiss snowboarder

Greeting from the French Alps...

Wow the past few days have been very interesting - a number of highs and an equal number of lows. I arrived in thee French Alpine resort of of Meribel on Saturday afternoon. The first hurdle being to pack for the job - working abroad and more specifically travelling when working abroad can be quite problematic when hauling a lot of photo equipment. Because I'll be doing quite a bit of traveling this year I invested in a Peli Case 1510. These puppies can be taken as carry on luggage but are also rugged as hell, water proof, chemical proof, pretty much bomb proof. I modded mine with some velcro straps so that my laptop could sit inside the lid (see below) Of course reading my airlines carry on restrictions made me panic at the last minute as it appeared the peli case wouldn't fit (bugger) so I loaded it up prepared to check it in i.e. keeping the most important stuff in my carry on back pack. Of course when I got to the airport I discovered that actually the carry on size was different to that advertised on the airlines website and it would fit afterall. Which was just as well because when I went to check it in I was 10kg over my limit and thus they wanted to charge me an extra £60! A quick reshuffle later and all my heavy camera equipment etc was in the peli case and being carried/wheeled on board (no weight limits applying for carry on with this airline apparently). Round one to me.





However shortly after arriving in France my laptop died - stuck in an endless loop of restarts. Which left me pretty screwed for the job...stroke of luck landed me with a borrowed laptop with its own copy of photoshop, and in the meantime I relied on my ipod touch for browsing the internet through its suprisingly good WiFi...but then that died too (well the backlight died). So rounds two and three definately didn't go my way. With another job straight after this one I will have about a day in London to go and buy a new laptop and try to replace the ipod which is in no way ideal.



Today I was shooting boarders and skiiers doing jumps in a driving blizzard - clear plastic bags and a miracle stopped by pocket wizzards and 580s from getting fried. So round four went to me. Still, snowboarding with camera equipment is pain in the ass (quite literally at times) and to do it I've had to use the Dakine Mission Photo pack (see above) which is pretty good and pretty rigid but annoyingly the 5D has to lose its battery grip because the bag isn't deep enough. Hopefully I'll do more thorough review of the Dakine and peli case when things return to normal and I'm back in the UK.