reiko-chan

i met up with my friend reiko again today.

i had no idea until today that she is very much into 

reading palms and all that nonsense. we sat outside a certain
west end coffee shop  and she read my lines and told me all about my life.

which i found very interesting...

i think the line she's pointing at shows how much coffee i drink.

or maybe it was to do with how many pairs of trainers i own.

after teaching me how to tell the difference between chinese and japanese

writing, and how to tell the difference between chinese and japanese girls, 

we said goodbye... 

well, just before we said goodbye, i did take a quick shot of her...

and in a textbook move, i managed to get myself in the reflection. grrr !

i've kept a few things reiko has drawn for me during the 3 years or so
since i met her...

when i went to tokyo for the first time, a couple of years ago, i was supposed
to see her on my last evening there but i wasn't feeling well and had an
early night instead.
in the morning there was a fax pushed under my door with this
illustration on it.

showing me flying home from the land of bathing ape and white rice
in my open-top plane, back to the land of marmite.
great stuff !


a few days later she emailed this to me... an illustration of my trip
to tokyo.

it showed the baseball game that we went to.

it also illustrated my outrage at being given a small beer in a restaurant
we went to. she thought it funny that i was offended by it
and called it a girl's size beer.

lastly it showed me and reiko having our photo taken by her friend yuriko,
infront of the electric garden with the tokyo tower in the background.
yuriko asked me to smile and i told her that the expression on my
face was as close as i get to smiling.
here is the photo that yuriko took...

hmmm... nice smile mark-san

chasing tail and using way too much product

as sarah lowe once said to me... " could your hair BE any greasier ? "

of course that was back in the day when i had long hair and used brylcreme.

nowadays my hair is fairly short and i use various product.

i usually try to use old school stuff...

black and white... shyeah right ! that'll wash out easily enough !

sometimes i use this...

it's pretty decent.

how could i not use this ?

dax green and gold.

it's the wax of the new millenium !

i bought a couple of tins of this in new york and use it on special occasions.

murrays superior pomade.

like a boss !

jackie bought me this stuff the other day

i like the label but i would like to have seen aveda put something on the lid too.
i think they're missing a trick there.

until recently this was my everyday choice...

yardley english lavender brilliantine. it smells so nice you'd want to spread it on
toast and eat it. gooner jeff once asked me what my aftershave was
because it smelled really good, and it was this !

however times change and now this is what i use most days...

it's the one i think sarah lowe would like best.

here's a group shot, which shows what a trick aveda are missing

murrays 1

aveda 0

sakiko

a couple of years ago i was shooting stills on a music video

for the band 'rival joustas'

they had invited fans along to be in the video and between takes

i shot a few portraits.

this was one of them... sakiko.

then last year i bumped into her in a mexican cafe in islington.

we got chatting and it turns out she's a very talented composer and pianist.

we decided to get together one afternoon and do a shoot.

some photos for her website and some portraits for me.

here's the first frame i took

i think this was the day after i bought my gf-1 and it was one of the first

shots i took with it.

it was a bit nippy so she put on her cardigan

really nice lighting eh ?

i really like this pic.

then we did a few set-ups for her to use on her site.

here she is on our sofa wearing a dress belonging to her mum.

then i did a few like this...

kind of dreamy.

and a few down in the car park...

which was really cold at the time.

afterwards we did a few portraits in my studio...

i like this, even though you can see the shoot through reflector.

and this is a good frame too.

finally i asked her if i could get a shot of her crying.

i offered to peel an onion or to punch her really hard

but she said it wasn't necessary... and after closing her eyes for

30 seconds or so, she conjured up a solitary tear, which i took 5 shots

as it appeared and moved slowly down her cheek.

a fantastic effort from sakiko. what a girl.

by the way, did i mention her music ?

it's beautiful...

www.myspace.com/sjnakahara

stand-in chef

when i was getting ready to shoot some portraits of the chef yesterday,

i asked bad twin to stand in, while i tried different lenses and lighting.

i promised her i wouldn't put any of the photos on my blog...

but i think she knew that i was lying.

i thought this would be a good shot of the chef...

she's got that mona lisa expression here don't you think ?

in this shot she was checking out some workmen outside

now this is the classic expression she gives me on a regular basis...

slightly condescending, a little bit of hate in her eyes perhaps ?

the look which lets me know she'd rather be somewhere else

and that she's not finding any of it amusing...

then she gives in, and laughs and we're all friends again.

until next time.

© bad twin photography

i just got home from a big shoot at a fantastic restaurant in kent.

hopefully i'll put up some of my photo's tomorrow.

in the meantime, here are some photo's of me in action today, taken by bad twin.

good effort

bad twin.

pushing daisies

how did this pass me by when it was on telly ?

fantastic stuff.

what a programme !

headporter

it was jackie's birthday last week. i bought her a couple of things that went down well,

but although she liked this, she said she won't really use it.

so the headporter coin purse is mine !