Brick Lane Documentary Shoot

Brick Lane is a street in the East End of London, site of a Sunday market, heart of the city's Bangladeshi community, former heart of the city's Jewish community, and before that, of its Huguenot community.
The Sunday market at Brick Lane, like the one nearby at Petticoat Lane, dates from when it was a Jewish community.

In the 20th century the Brick Lane area was important in the second wave of development of Anglo-Indian cuisine, as families from countries such as Bangladesh migrated to London to look for work. The 'curry houses' of Brick Lane are known for their cheap and cheerful food, and for allowing customers to bring their own beer (often the curry house itself will not sell alcohol as most are run by Muslims).

More recently the area has also broadened to being a vibrant art and fashion student area, with considerable exhibition space. Each year most of the fine art and fashion courses exhibit their work near Brick Lane.

It has also been, since the late 1990s, the site of several of the city's best known night clubs, notably 93 Feet East and The Vibe Bar, both built on the site of The Old Truman Brewery, once the industrial centre of the area, now an office and entertainment complex.

Nearby buildings of interest include Christ Church, Spitalfields, The Jamme Masjid or Great London Mosque on the corner of Fournier Street, and the head office of Habitat on Princelet Street.

Photo a day has been updated

Photo a day blog has been updated! go check it out!

http://photoinday.blogspot.com/

The end of the anti photography facism

After a grueling two weeks working day after day on that evil task called a Dissertation and having turned it in, I am quite relieved to be able to get back to my photography. It has been quite horrible beeing barely able to use my camera and the backlog of Images from my last two shoots. Fortunatly between last night today I have managed to finish the images from the Brick Lane documentary run two weeks ago and I can start on the Regent's Park Portrait shoot also from two weeks ago and my recent work in the studio. Aditionally This weekend I also have a High street editorial shoot with the London Graphics group. And of course as usual there is the photo a day project which I hope to get and keep up to date from now onwards keep upto date with at long last the tedious days of essaying are over...at least until may that is... but for now enjoy some more of the Brick Lane Images

What a weekend!

As usual, my updates are posted late in a timely manner, filled with too much news for just one post, so I will try and water it down. Took me only 11 days in 2009 to get my first post up, which goes to show what a way to start the year eh!? Well bloggingly it may have not begun well but photographically its taken off quite considerably, with a photography trip over yonder to Japan in may with none other than the great Joe Mcnally (if you have ever read this blog before you would know he is my uber photographer Idol!), Successfully engaging in a photo a day (not nescessarilly uploading daily, but deff clicking) with the daily photo challenge.org! however the monthly challenge is proving to be more elusive as I have quickly run out of self portrait Idea's, but not to fret! I'm sure I will get right back on the wagon (especially once the dossiers and dissertation are ouf of the way). Anywho if you want to follow that, In an attempt to save my photo a day project which I begun shortly before Xmas, I will be posting my dailies on there, and if they are exceptionally good they may make their way onto this blog.

SO! onto news! yesterday I had the joyfull oportunity to shoot with the london photo and graphics group at brick lane! However I wont go into details today or else the chances of this blog beeing read will diminish exponentially for every word I write so I'll just go straigh tto hte pictures!














Also! Leicester square froze over last night! Pictures of THAT after the break Since I'm barely running late for another shoot! Enjoy!

2oo8 A Year in Pictures

Its that time of the year again, as the hours into 2009 slowly tick away we make last minute reviews on our year, was it good? Bad? Will the next year be any better? What will my resolutions be? So I thought it's about time I did the same with my year as a photographer. However if you really aren't intersted in reading my valuable pearls of thoughts, and want to go straight to the images my book, " 2oo8 a year in pictures" is available for sale right here! right now! with prices starting at about 30 quid for a large hardbound book. The perfect Item to help bring you and your coffee table into the new year :).

sample pages from 2oo8 A Year in Pictures:




Hope these will entice you to purchase a copy! To order one just drop me an email, or pop a comment down saying you are interested and a full price list will be emailed to you.

2008 began quite slowly for me as a photographer, but with two particularly important shooting oportunities. One beeing my trip to paris producing a vivid new environment for me to shoot in, resulting in some of my fave images of the year. I was also able to have my first proper photoshoot after having joined the NAPP and benefiting from the ounces of knowledge made available to me. throughout the month the only other memorable shoot was the opportunity to shoot the 3 kings celebrations as they passed the floats through the streets.

three kings/xmas celebrations





Febuary and March were rather slow months for me as a photographer, the only pictures beeing results of "work". In Febuary aside from a party at my dorm that I was asked to photograph and som other random social portraits I was devoid of proper shooting oportunities. However despite that I was quite happy with the results of some of the images from the party proving my slow but steady mastering of flash photography.



March As I mentioned was devoid of photography minus some portraits for Asian woman of Director Imtiaz ali and actress Karen David. which due to ownership issues I cannot at present post.

In April my photography picked up considerably, with some shooting done at the local airport, portobello road market, and of course Photoshop world! bringing to me my latest upgrade in photography my new camera body the 40D! and my Pocket Wizards and additional strobes giving me full power on off camera flash photography, and of course my first oportunity to try it out, the photoshoot I did with my cousin in the tight confines of my room which ended up producing some rather impressive images.



May once again slowed down due to the increasing ammount of deadlines and procrastination, however that didnt stop me from my seccond photoshoot making use of my off camera strobes



June
In June the photos began to pick up once again as I was home for the summer. I also took the oportunity to organise a sunrise photoshoot on the beach which turned out brilliantly!

July Continued with my photography, however this time it was based more on clearing backlog from previous months and some heavy duty photoshop studies. However despite that I managed to arrange a little shoot to help me try and shoot jewellry in a fashion context. This is the month that I also began my travel to the US stopping by LA and in August New York. I was also able to shoot at the salon de comic de benalmadena in malaga extending my networking into the local anime community.



August Began in New York a gorgeous city for photography, with oportunities cropping up left and right. However what followed, the city of pittsburgh proved to be the complete oposite as it always does. However thanks to Model Mayhem I was able to meet with a lovely model who introduced me to an artists hangout, a brilliant photoshoot and her husbant another fellow photographer.


September brought the beggining of the end of summer. I was also able to work under Nacho Alcala a National Geographic photographer who although having only met him twice was able to greatly open my photographic eyes. I hope to meet him more often upon my return to malaga. Aditionally I also spent a weekend in madrid, proving to be very exhausting and usefull as I met Hitesh Sawlani (www.hitkaiser.com) and his merry band of photographers to go and shoot a classic motorbike run and the famous anual white night of madrid!




October brought the return to uni and a frantic house hunt/move in leaving little time for photography except for a shoot for Asian Woman of renowned Bollywood film director Karan Johar
November brought me back to the studio as my friend Lavina volunteered to do a shoot with me, resulting in much better shots than I had anticipated. Certainly since my last time in the studio which was January.

December the last and final month of the year has been quite photo heavy, with me making a trip up to bristol, adn finally making my first trip with the London Photo and graphics meetup group and an anime group which I meet weekly, as their oficial photographer designer (North East london anime society). The London Photo and Graphics meetup went extremely well and I hope to frequent it much more in the comming year.



In Conclusion 2008 has certainly been an impressive year in terms of my photography. With the resources made available to me and the oportunities to shoot i feel I have made leaps and bounds in the quality of my photography. Something that I hope will continue in the comming year.

Tis the season to be Jolly!

Twas the season to be jolly! X-mas has come and gone, gifts have been given, and recieved, and I spent it flying on a plane (thankfully xmas spirit was in order and I got class upgrades all throughout the journey :D) However all was not lost as I took off from Hong Kong, the final leg in my journey (starting from London going via Dehli, HK, and ending in Manila), I was lucky enough to end up in a window seat just as the sun was setting! Fortunately I had also decided prior that I was going to make use of my SLR considering I had a windows seat and was able to get some gorgeous sunsets. However those will not be the pictures of today's post. I felt today we were in need of a slightly more festive environment so I took the liberty of uploading some xmas light shots of when I was in bristol. Enjoy!







Also if you have been paying attention to my flickr, You may have noticed some recent pics I uploaded of the Malaga Mountains, these were just some old pics I had lying around that I finally decided to get around to processing.

Merry xmas and a happy new year!

Double update

Well here I am yet again with another fun filled blogpost maintaining the regularity of irregularity that makes this blog special. Just as it seems that the blog is about to curl up and die from inactivity here I come returning to the scene with yet another over written post trying to mention everything I have to say without boring my fellow fans. (those of you that do actually bother to read what I write). Now just because I haven’t been blogging (a nasty habbit I hope to extinguish once Juggling Dissertation and pre production become a bad dream) doesn’t mean I haven’t been processing and shooting as you will clearly see below the latest images from my last studio work.

This one may have been a bit overexposed with the light but I still love the overall look of the image :D


After that though I did manage to join the London Graphics and Photo meetup group to go out on a night of shootin around London producing some of my more impressive shots in a while :D. I am very pleased and hope to maintain or improve upon the standard.





Of course X-mas season is coming up (meaning I need to shoot xmas lights and head out to hyde park to shoot the xmas thingy mabobber), but for those of you still looking for that uber last minute x-mas gift I will be making available a photobook with some of my Best Images, and a Calendar to take you into the new year which will be available from my deviantart page for purchase.