Before I forget

Official shoot.

Official shoot.

Official shoot.

Official shoot.

...the people. Okay the shots too.

...but they were super easy...

...not much to say about these...

All on my Leica M f1.4 50mm...

These were sprinkled around, it was Christmas time. It felt Christmassy.

Rules are meant to be broken, and arrows are for cowboys and indians. Don't question me, I don't think long enough.

Crazy-assed people do fairground rides at night with all the flashing lights and stuff. You may be okay but what about the kid who's chugged his shake. #thinkaboutit

Beach volleyball at night then, never crossed my mind and it won't work at the Olympics either. Only in America.

It's a weird day when a passing family let their kid throw a doll at a pink haired spacewoman standing on the pier with an umbrella whilst she waves at me.

Next year I'm gonna do an anti-halloween garage filled with fairies and nice things but give out leaflets on the perils of sugar consumption & tooth decay. Yin/yang thing.

And there's another in the kitchen that flashes eat red and blue. It's all too much. It's a neon love story for our time.

Left the camera on 1/90 and it was super bright so the rest of the shot is gone, but the reflection holds a little gem hidden within... that's right, me.

You just can't mess with Pooh in the snow when he's lost his trousers. Piglet is super annoying though and deserves a smack.

All me stuff's only gone and turned up from across the pond. All the Led Zeppelin box sets and this total beauty... now where's my guitar. Wild Horses. Sigh.

...have the most unexpected items just sitting there making you feel uneasy.

It's a song. Not really. Yes really.

Not sure what the future holds and whether or not I'll look back and think I could have stopped this... September, the 14th, 2017.

Least intelligent, 'in the' entry... went to the Mojave when it was already past 100 at home.. 108f, what's the f stand for..? Freaking hot. We came, we saw, we left.

Continuing the new series, 'in the' here we find my son contemplating a swim or mild thrashing around in three feet water. Depending on your viewpoint.

Part of a new series, 'in the' will detail my everyday adventures in my everyday life... not really, I just thought I'd photograph my three favourite beers. FYI the one on the right is going down first.

Part of a set of new stuff, shot over 1,200 images... make hay whilst the sun shines!

Isn't this a great shot, love the shade, it looks amazing in colour too but I just gotta have the mono. I need a Leica M mono.

Hey, let's have this sign at both ends of a walk through the hills shall we, some of us seem to walk in the wrong direction and miss all the important stuff. Kids had to put down their Harry Potter wands and everything man.

Lifted straight from Photoshop, this is a set of screen grabs from the new home screen movie animation. Is it a movie, is it an animation... it is four massive photoshop files saved as mp4 and merged into one on an 8 second timeline. Timelines, ugh.

It's an updated version of what I had but I've had to think about the Facebook awareness campaign.

...I just couldn't use the Carousel or static image variants, most of what I felt like using just didn't crop. Digital media man, it'll kill me off. Pixel hell.

Even though I've just moaned about it, pixels and stuff... it does let me take extra shots and push it. Because I love shooting and risking it all, almost blown or too dark, almost too much sun. It just doesn't matter if you've got what you need anyway.

So you can see I like shots through things, obscuring my way so I have to work harder and run the risk of getting nothing. Is this one of those shots where I got nothing...oh I don't know but I like it anyway.

When to see Elton John's Radical Eye collection, was alright. Bought a book.

Family meal, baby's face obscured by wine bottle... Some things just work.

Occasionally twitter shows me something, and I think "yeah"... I think yeah about lots of things. I must spend more time doing yeah things. That's my goal.

I love the song by Harvey Danger, Little Round Mirrors... I think of it when I see this shot in particular, and a little sadness too. Proper fella the drummer.

A nice easy relaxed session, super warm light when the clouds weren't about doing their grey thang. Observe.

I'll always at least try to shoot some shots facing the sun, it's easier with my Leica, which incidentally is not the simplest choice for action photography.

Turned out harder to get something meaningful than I imagined it to be. Gave it a shot. My Leica M is awesome.

Tempted. Homer Simpson mmmm fudge.

The rangefinder didn't like doing this and it was always out of focus, but kinda nailed it anyways. Have to keep reminding myself there's nothing to lose with memory cards so just do it. ©Nike

The bar, just the place I take my children.

Or something like that, will google muse.

...for her 'inevitable' modelling career.

Out walking with my family, doing some hills, doing some sunshine, doing some camera stuff with my beautiful new, but used, Leica M and lovely 50mm Summilux... And then there we were reading the rattlesnake warning. Standard. Ha, and then obligatory Trump exclamation. Standard also. Bless.

Ruined a perfectly decent pair of boots walking across field after field after field after someone's massive garden... because we got lost on the public footpaths. First and last time for everything. On the upside, found this frozen crazyass puddle. Check it.

As anyone who uses their camera to earn a living, or at least pay the bills (and more hopefully buy new gear) will tell you... we loves our bags we do. My fave bag at this moment in time is my Manfrotto shoulder bag 50, and it really does get all this in, not the tripod as that has its own rather awesome bag. It's bag porn. It's bag love.

Not just light, either. Very much underexposed and I went to work on the old frequency separation... a couple of layers later the whole shot is looking perfectly lit. It does just work out sometimes when you shoot just for the shadows and hit the contrast. Only sometimes.

This is my favourite sign at the moment. I love it.

...it's a book about cats. My own fault as I looked at the cover and thought 'cool', and it's not cool. Following on from the beer I will strive to make sure 2016 finishes strongly.

...bought this full of hope that it might have some extra taste – turns out you can't judge a bottle by its label. I finished it out of politeness.

December in LA isn't too similar to England now is it. Teeshirt, sunglasses, eating outside vs hat, coat, hot soup..! Why I am digging this out now? Well, see the weather, it's summer here in the UK and it's not warm as it was then in southern California.

Not sure it is classed as a forest but growing up it was always a forest to me. I'm not growed up yet, so it's a forest. Animals make the winding paths and there's zero rattlesnakes, worst that could happen is a stray twig tangling in your hair.

Have totally decided I do not like these and never will.

This is done in Photoshop RAW, this with some blurring fx just about sums up what Instagram's milkshake brings to the yard. Oh, and square crops.

...different day.

Doesn't take long before I start to long for this again. It does hurt, it does take for ages, it does cost money. But even so.

This zoo is tops, it has massive views from the top of the Chiltern hills, there's a white lion carved into the chalk on one side that can be seen from the next county. And, you can feed giraffes man. You can feed 'em. Pictured are my two little monkeys. I have to feed them too.

I'm glad I know where these are now, it's like visiting a memory.

Mainly I only wanted to go here because of Bill & Ted, and that was because I remember Kirk fighting with a lizard chap with big eyes and some weird playsuit had implanted the rocks in my memory. I love it round there—a strange sense of history but only from the late 60s. Because it’s from before my life started it is counted as history. Rule of thumb, before you’re born—history. Just after you’re born, keep quiet as it shows how old you are—remember Kiss’s first gig? No, me either, too young y’see.

Having never been here before I didn’t know what to expect, how many others would be there, how far you can see… A month or two after a road we drove down to get there was affected by geographical movement, it was all twisted up in the move mental fashion.

Anyway, I didn’t do what everyone else was doing, mainly climbing up one of the slopes. I’m good with heights, but I’m not good with tourists and their point and clicks around their necks. Old you see, but too young to have seen Kiss live at the beginning, so there. I think all should visit the rocks and explore, you just can’t stand still. There’s so much to walk round and look at. Maybe it’s just me. Maybe it’s just for so long I’ve seen the iconic shapes that being there means something. I’d be like this on the moon.

Something I need to research more than I have

My wife loves Dita Von Teese – I totally understand why, my problem is that I know why I understand, I just wish I didn't.

My wife loves all things Dita Von Teese. Whenever I think of her name I think of the word tease, I’m guessing it’s intentional. It must be. I’m not initiated, the first I knew of Ms Von Teese was when I read she was Marilyn Manson’s love interest. Does he have love interests? I don’t know him. I feel I’m writing in very short sentences, I think I do this when I explain what I’m thinking, putting into words my thoughts—which are all probably short themselves. That, is not my fault.

Anyway, from what I see from the outside, I think I like burlesque—I’ve been to Paris and walked past Crazy Horse, from the Mötley Crüe song, stood there awhile thinking “shall I take a picture”, I didn’t. I don’t take more pictures than I do take. And that’s easy to explain. I’ve been places and forgotten everything, been told I’ve met someone and because I’m there with my camera there’s no memory in my head. I don’t care mostly as my camera is my memory of most things, but like a navigation device in a car that takes you places—you don’t actually learn how to get there. Remember when you used to ask the time as a kid and your mum would just tell you to look at the clock yourself. That.

So burlesque, then. In my head it’s mixture of the Wild Wild West and Paris dancing with frilly knickers, high kicks, drinking shots and six shooters. It has that whole stripper image, but I know it’s not about that. It has that whole seedy bar image, but I know it’s not about that. I think about the can-can, but I really know it’s not about that… but it does have all that in it, in my head.

I should do a whole load more research on this subject and get out of my head what I think is in it. I think I’m going crazy.

#obviously.

Bless my wife... This little car really suited her and it will be sad to see it go, but it's summer, it's a soft-top car... We're moving to Los Angeles and I ain't importing no right hand drive to no America fool..!

I love this, I just had to find it... I see this shot and it reminds me of Californication the tv show's opening title sequence. Special mention to the person who sprayed fuck on the sign.