suus

did anybody out there watch eurovision 2012 on saturday ?

i'm a big fan of it to be honest. although there are a lot of rubbish songs

on the night, i always find one or two gems each year that make it onto my 

iphone playlist.

my favourite song this year was "suus" by rona nishliu ( albania )

interested ? then check out the video below...

sure, i'd have preferred a slightly more pretentious video, and i think the lesson

learned from it is that it's difficult to chalk onto a mirror.

still, i really like the song, it's a real grower and rona has got a fantastic hobson's.

if it was bjork singing it in english i think it'd be a hit, so give it a chance

and listen to an albanian girl singing her heart out.

nice one rona.

and the vote just in from n7... albania 12 points.

any ideas ?

on friday i was photographing some lighting on location in nw1.

at one point i looked out of the window and saw this scene.

any ideas ?

cymru am byth

in a sweet pub in wiltshire i spotted a map of god's own country.

seconds later another cheap blog post was in the bag.

stonehenge from the a303

i do like the a303.

did you see that documentary about it last year ?

www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/tv/2011/05/a303-highway-to-the-sun.shtml

one of my favourite things about the a303 is that the drive takes you

really close to stonehenge ( which like my friend gerry's wallet is now a world heritage site )

i only visited stonehenge once, maybe 20 years ago and though it's very interesting

i was a bit choked that you weren't allowed near the stones. visitors are kept back

quite a long way from them by ropes.

to be honest the view is almost as good when you drive past on the a303.

to illustrate this ( badly ) i took a couple of photos as i drove by last week.

1

ok, maybe not the greatest argument for driving by and not visiting properly.

2

 yeah ok... 

... you shouldn't drive by. just pull off the a303 and go visit stonehenge properly.

www.stonehenge.co.uk

self-portrait in gl54

gl54 ?

yes, gl54.

and for my trip to the very sweet little gl based town, i wore:

black bape polo shirt with yellow trim

grey stüssy x dickies trousers with purple trim

black ponyhair medicom x nike af-1's with sail trim

and the next day i treated my barnet to a trim.

like a bus !

any idea what this is ?

that's right. it's the view looking down from the top deck of a new routemaster.








we are big bus fans here at whitfield towers, so imagine the excitement on saturday
when i saw this bad boy pulling up on piccadilly as i made my way home

a new routemaster, i believe it's one of only 6 in use at the moment.
naturally i made my way to the top deck, back seat... like a boss !

exciting times in w1

the doubtful ( barbeque ) guest

if anybody out there was thinking about inviting me to a barbeque this summer...

well you've got to weigh up the pros and cons really.

sure i'll bring a camera along and the chances are i'll take a few nice photos.

maybe i'll tell the odd amusing story and come out with the occasional funny line but...

i will pull my face at most of the things on offer, while taking the last bottle of corona

away from a friend of yours who you've known for much longer than me.

i will eat more meat than anybody else and then skulk off without offering to help with the dishes.

then again i'll wear some nice trainers.

pros and cons.

anyway, you know in the film terminator 2 when arnie walks into a bar and you see

how he sees things ?

well, this is pretty much how i saw the barbeque on sunday afternoon.
it's what i like to call meat-vision©

note how all the meat is right in front of me.

 this is fig 1 in my bbq textbook.

thanks to credit and mrs credit for inviting me over. it was great to see you both.

elvis

my friend elvis has a big piece.

his watch is an omega railmaster.

self-portrait in my car park with daylight's daughter

this was maybe three years ago now.

i don't really have a nickname for the girl but i used to work with her dad

and he was referred to by some of my colleagues, as 'daylight'

so, one day i was doing some portraits for daylight's daughter and towards the end

i insisted on getting in a frame or two.

here's one of the shots.

i've no idea what one of us is wearing but the other one is sporting:

 a bathing ape 'teriyaki boyz' t-shirt, evisu jeans and suede af-1's

nike air force 1 max air vac-tech

after missing out on these in london ( because they dropped the day i went to paris )

then missing them in paris ( because colette only had 9 pairs )

i bought a pair from the bay, from a seller in the usa. 

the price was the same as they retailed for in the uk, though obviously there was postage on top.

they arrived at whitfield towers a few days ago

very well packaged. they were double boxed, plus the af1 box was wrapped in clingfilm.

here's the reveal

grrr ! i hate the way nike shoes arrive laced like that but anyway, what great kicks.

look at the way they are constructed. they are vac-tech af-1's

so no stitched seams. and look at the material. a really nice camo.

obviously the pattern is different on each shoe too.

magic darts !

the eye stays are in a soft, luxurious black leather. black waxed laces with white tips

and special black and white 30th anniversary dubres are a nice finishing touch.

but wow ! look at the camo on the tip and the toe box.

the tongues are in the same camo

and the tongue tab uses the same soft black leather as the eye stays

this shot is to try and show you the vac-tech. look how the parts of the shoe are seamless

and the black swoosh is not stitched on, it's just moulded to the mid panel and the foxing.

it's a really well made shoe

the heel tab is in black leather

with black stitching. fair enough.

the sole has a big difference to any other af-1's in my collection

they have a 360 degree air bubble.

it's a black mid i guess but with a clear bubble going all the way around

with orange colouring inside.

here's the front view of the sole

hmmm, it looks like the outsole is a black ice material

oh i nearly forgot to mention. these are incredibly comfortable by the way

the sock liner uses a padded, soft, perforated black glove leather. very lush.

so here's another look at the whole picture

maybe not everybody's cup of tea but i think they are really decent.

or should i say "these shoes are a problem"

or simply "fire"

robo-cat v tom ford

for those of you who are fans of robo-cat and wondering where she was.
it's a long story but how can i say this ?...

... well let's just say i have decided not to work with her again.

this is the last photo i took of her a few weeks ago after i photographed her paintings.

to try and get a different look, i asked her to try on my spectacles.
i took a couple of shots and then went home.

i booked her for a shoot a few days later and then...

... as i said, it's a long story.

behind the scenes

here's a shot i did to show how i photographed a girl for the mail on sunday

a couple of years ago

( that's mc-mc on assisting duties )

and here's how the shot of the girl came out

by the way, have you ever been phoned by somebody and you answer only

to find that the person has dialled you by mistake and their phone is in their 

pocket or handbag or something ?

well this girl phoned me like that a couple of weeks later one day at 2am.

grrr !

full english breakfast... kind of

occasionally on a shoot i get treated to more than just a coffee.

the place in sp3 came up trumps the other day and offered me breakfast.

naturally i had to make a couple of adjustments to the standard full english.

here's what i had.

no tomatoes, no mushrooms.

perfect.

thanks to charlie for this.

self-portrait in n7 with agent 'y'

at the end of a little shoot at whitfield towers with agent 'y'

i decided that the last frame of the day should be of the two of us.

both myself and agent 'y' are representing n7, which is the title of the project i'm

working on at the moment ( more to come on this over the next few months )

on a side note, i like that my shadow looks like tintin wearing an american football shirt 

self-portrait in w5

here's an old self-portrait i did when shooting a japanese restaurant in west london 

a few years ago.

it was for a restaurant guide and i remember that before this place, i had to photograph

a japanese restaurant in smithfield a couple of hours earlier.

so, to me, photographing two japanese restaurants on the bounce, it made perfect sense

to wear this japanese t-shirt of mine... right ?

wrong !

mishkins

a few weeks ago i went to a belting place called mishkins to take photos

for  a magazine.

mishkins is the invention of the bloke who owns my favourite london eaterie... spuntino.

maybe i'll show you some wider shots of the place when the magazine has been published,

but in the meantime here are some details.

1

the specials board.

i love those boards... the ones with little letters and numbers that have pegs on the back.

2

simple stuff, but the details are great. the glasses are fantastic and the salt and pepper pots

though they look simple and nothing special, are really high quality little things.

3

that's all you need, right there in a plastic container, just bring on the food.

4

in the corner of the restaurant is a little room. a little wooden shed-like thing.

it's actually an old sound booth from the bbc which is now a kind of private room for say 6 people

and when you want service, you switch on the "on air" light.

amazing !

5

you know me by now... you can only imagine how long i spent photographing

these bottles.

they are just simple plastic sauce bottles right ?

but to me, they are things of beauty.

good lads.

http://mishkins.co.uk/?referrer=true

bapestas

i wore my pair of purple patent leather bapestas last week.

i've had them for maybe 8 years and they've pretty much been retired

for some time now.

for those of you who don't know... well, i'm not saying that a bathing ape ripped

off nike's air force 1's, but...

bapestas are pretty, pretty similar.

maybe i'll show you my other bathing ape kicks later in the week ?

little one

i had to look through some old hard drives last week to find some portraits of marion north

that i'd taken in 2005.

while looking through the folders i found a few old pics that i'd like to share with you 

over the next few days.

here's the first one...

a frame of my assistant 'little one' that i did while testing the lighting for a portrait

shoot in a west end theatre.

i liked working with 'little one' very much. she was a cheeky little thing, but a good worker.

coffee in w1 with batter

i got a text out of the blue last week from mongolia's number 1 gangster

alan batter.

he was in the west end doing a bit of shopping and would i like to meet him ?

i was on a shoot in a wood workshop in w4 at the time but when i finished, 

i headed over to w1 and met him in another workshop... workshop coffee.

this is what we looked at as we chatted.

two flat whites and two glasses of water... perfect !

what we talked about was top secret so don't ask.

www.workshopcoffee.com