As mentioned in a previous post I have been getting a fair bit of photography work come through lately so I decided that it would be a nice addition to my site to give them a proper home. After wrestling with some code and coming to terms with the amazing NextGen plugin for wordpress I was able to give my photos the home the deserve. It’s all nicely organised into band photography, events, places and people. You can find the main photography navigation page by clicking the link on the left hand navigation or by clicking here.

If you wish to contact me about any photography work or for any other reason please do so, you can find my contact details here.

Enjoy!

(remember, all images are copyright protected, if you wish to use any for any reason please contact me)

I’ve been getting a little bit of photographic work lately which has lead to some well needed £’s which in turn has tempted me to buy a couple of new sexy lenses for my camera which has been nice. I got to put them through their paces at the Launch night of my-um.com to take some photos of Kid Id which was ace. I am really happy with how they handle the low-light and the results the produce! To see the rest of the photos from of Kid-Id from the my-um.com launch follow the ‘read more’ link or click here. To view previous photos of Kid Id I have taken check out the Photograph Archive.

Also worth checking out is my-um.com which seems rather exciting for music lovers, musicians and promoters, in their own words it is “[a] brand new world for music lovers, makers and industry heads alike. Bands - MY-UM offers you a platform to promote and release your music, earn money, and get expert advice”

As always I highly reccomend getting down to a Kid Id gig, they are lots of fun and their new stuff is ace! Check them out!

Read the rest of this entry »

Well It’s finally spring time, well it kind has been feeling like it lately. The nights are getting longer the grass is growing again and the birds wake meup every morning at 4am.

Over the May bank holiday my housemate and I decided to do some gardening, which he recorded with his camera and tilt shift lens set to take photos on 7 second intervals. Put together this makes an awesome fun little time-lapse video! Check out the video here. Whilst there check out Paolo’s awesome photography too!

I was asked by Kid ID (pronounced ‘iid’ not ‘eye dee’, they don’t like it when people pronounce their name wrong… right guys?) to take some publicity photos for them. With nothing really in mind we begun trekking one Friday evening around Kings Cross and  we found a really cool door with some cool graffiti art work (According to the writing in the grafiti it was something to do with ‘Satirical Contemporary Art’)  and took some photos in-front of it, lots of fun, although the guys were freezing standing in-front of the camera. The lighting made for some fun-surreal almost alien obduction kind of shots which worked out really well.

They are a really cool, fun band and defiantly should be checked out! If your in the UK try and get to one of their gigs, they are constantly playing in and around London and Leeds. You will not be disapointed, very fun, lively and happy band. Listen to their stuff on myspace here.

To see other photos of Kid ID in action check out my photography section here.

 

Another year and another Valentines day has come and gone. Every year I seem to say ‘next year it will be different’, it never really is… except this year. I didn’t spend the time alone, pondering, telling myself it’s just another day, telling myself that there is no point going out amongst all of the people brandishing roses and gifts for their loved ones. This year I decided to just, well, treat it as another day.

It was after-all another weekend and should be treated as just that, a time to just do normal weekend stuff. I spent the day with a friend (read that correctly Mum, ‘friend’… although female not ‘girl-friend,’ so no questions please) throughly enjoying myself at Borough Markets, pushing through throngs of people, smelling amazing smells, seeing beautiful colours, tasting tasty things. This was followed by the enjoyment of wondering through National Portrait gallery, a brief walk through China Town and then cooking and eating a fine meal and having wondrous discussions about everything and anything.  

After such a nice day I decided to spend the morning in bed on the Sunday following pondering the day before and what it all means in the grand scheme of things. I decided that in the spirit of my highly positive and fun start to 2009 I would come up with a bit of a thought for the day, a mantra I guess one could call it, a way to live and think, I decided upon the following: ‘There’s A Place For Love’. 

Keeping with this mantra and ideal I decided that the day would be spent doing things that I, quite simply, love to do. I decided a good way of going about this would be to combine two things I do love: Chocolate and cooking (well baking if your being picky), problem solved.

Thus I give you my results of my thinking and doings of Valentines day (and the sunday after) 2009: a recipe for amazingly good ‘Place For Love Double Chocolate Cookies’. They are nice and chewy inside and crunchy out side, just like they should be, mmm. (I kind of made this up as I went along so quantities may need to be adjusted ever so slightly to achieve optimal results… maybe I was just lucky because they tasted ace!)

Ingredients

1 1/4 cups of self-raising flour
2/3 cup Cocoa (Green and Blacks Organic is by far my favorite)
pinch of salt
3/4 cup of butter
1/2 cup Caster Sugar
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 large egg
Splash of milk if it needs a little more liquid
Small to medium block of white chocolate, bashed with a rolling pin to make large-ish chunks.

Mix it all up!

Cream the butter and sugar until silky. Mix in the egg and all of the remaining dry ingredients. I don’t bother sifting the flour and the cocoa, mainly because we don’t have a sift but I’m sure it wouldn’t hurt.

Mix well until it forms a bit of a thick, pasty, smooth texture. I had to use a couple of drops of milk to achieve this as it was a little dry to begin with. Mix in the crushed white chocolate chunks. I don’t bother using a wooden spoon at this point and prefer to get my hands all gooey, get dirty, its more fun!

Take a piece of mixture and roll it into a golf-ball sized ball and place onto a sheet of baking paper on an oven tray. Flatten with the palm of your hand until the ‘cookie’ is about 15mm thick. Fill up the baking tray and pop into the oven at 180°c for about 10 minutes. At 10 minutes remove from the oven and gently flatten a little more with a fork until cracks appear at the edge of the cookie. Place back into the oven for a further 5 minutes.

lick the bowl, lick your fingers and Enjoy!