MOBO Awards

I got a late call today asking if I could cover both arrivals and inside coverage of the winners with their awards for this year's MOBO Awards.
It was all fairly straight forward as I was the only photographer shooting the artists at the winner's boards. Estelle (top photo) scooped two awards and other notable attendees included Mel B, Billy Ocean, Grace Jones and John Legend.

Arise Magazine Usage

I was very pleased to see that at the Africa Rising event they supplied everyone with a free, glossy style and music magazine named 'Arise' containing several of my photos. This was issue one - The Africa Issue - of the magazine, produced by the organizers of the event and documented much of the Africa Rising event as well as featuring leading artists linked with the continent. The people behind it start it as a monthly in January, and given how well it's produced it's one to look for.
Below is the front cover, followed by two of my photos of Jay Z (full page) and Youssou N'Dour (double page spread!), both of which I took at Africa Rising in Washington DC.

Africa Rising At The Royal Albert Hall

Having travelled to Nigeria and Washington DC to cover the other Africa Rising music and fashion shows it was great to be able to photograph the event relatively calmly so close to home. As things turned out, this event was the best of the lot - the organizers obviously pulled out all stops for this show, which is run to portray the positive side of Africa.
Nigerian media mogul Nduka is the man behind the event and having got Jay Z, Rihanna and Naomi Campbell, amongst others, to take part in Nigeria he was able to secure Christina Aguilera and Seal to perform at the Royal Albert Hall.
The music and fashion shows were a lot of fun to photograph and I was especially pleased with my live Seal pictures. However, the all the acts were upstaged by Colin Powell being dragged up on stage to dance for 10 minutes (second from bottom photo).

Queen with Paul Rogers Play The O2 Arena

If I were to asked which band or artist I'd like to go back in time to photograph, Queen would certainly feature very high on my list. Freddie Mercury was one of the most iconic and spellbinding singers to photograph of all time, but sadly the Queen of the new millennium, with former Free lead man Paul Rogers fronting the band, cannot match the band in their pomp of the 70s and 80s (apart from Brian May's hair which remains the same as it has since the 70s).
Sure, Rogers can certainly belt out a tune, but he is a long way from matching Freddie in terms of exuberance and individuality. Perhaps that was the point when they handpicked Rogers, knowing that no-one could match Freddie. Some of the reviews suggested this seemed like a glamours tribute band to Queen and it's not far from the truth.
Of course the fans loved hearing some of their favourite songs again and I did really enjoyed shooting the show. I got some cracking photos, with the light being up to the standard you'd expect of the O2 Arena, and it was good to get some strong images of such a recognisable guitarist as Brian May.

Stock Market Trader

I was called out late this Saturday evening to shoot a prominent French Stock market trader in a London house for Paris Match magazine.
The problem was, he was being interviewed by a French journalist and didn't know he was to be photographed, so after getting clearance through the journalist, who kindly asked him if I could shoot him, I turned up and got what shots I could as a two hour interview took place. Unfortunately, with the interview going on so long the trader, whose name never found out, was in a rush to leave with his business partner and family so could only pose very briefly. Hardly the situation I'd hoped for, given it was for a high profile magazine, but in these situations you just have to get what you can.

Financial Crisis

With the stock markets crashing and today was labelled 'Black Friday' because of the financial world in ruin I was sent out to get stock photos of the banks in trouble and of traders leaving the London stock exchange.
Unfortunately, unlike many years ago when they wore bowler hats, the traders wear normal clothes and the London Stock Exchange has moved from Bank in the heart of the city to a rather generic-looking building at St Paul's meaning photos of them tend to look like any others workers in London leaving their office, rather than images with a stronger context of the financial disaster taking place.

Amy MacDonald Plays The Roundhouse

Amy MacDonald is another name who has built her success through a growing fan base on MySpace. I'd not photographed her before so I thought I'd pop down to a local venue of mine, the Roundhouse in Camden.
The lighting on Amy was the harshest white light imaginable - I really don't know what the lighting people were thinking. Amy is quite a pale girl anyway, so having this light on her made her face totally bleached out and that's before trying to capture her through a lens. This meant I had to turn my camera settings almost as if I was shooting in day light to capture her without over exposing her. In the end I got away with making the exposure look OK, but why such a harsh white light I don't understand.

Shane Warne Book Signing

I was the only photographer here for this cricketing legend signing copies of his new book 'Shane Warne's Century: My Top 100 Test Cricketers' at Waterstone's. As I was waiting for him I kept hearing an Aussie voice in my head saying, "bowling Warney" as was so often heard from his teammates during his career.
I resisted the temptation to say it when he arrived though and as the only photographer he was friendly enough to me.

High School Musical 3 Premiere

Not being from the target audience, I don't think I realised just how popular the High School Musical brand was before this premiere. But on hearing more two hours of hysterical screaming (the loudest and most persistent I've heard at a premiere), largely caused by the appearance of actor Zac Efron (top photo) I soon learnt the impact the films has had on the younger generation. It's been suggested that it's the Greece for a new generation and that Efron is the new John Travolta, which seems like a fair comparison.
Photography wise it was a bit messy as there were so many families with children milling and gawping on the red carpet on their way into the cinema, meaning a lot of the time we unable to get clean shots of the stars. However, Vanessa Hudgens (bottom photo) posed for long enough to get the required shots of her and, to be fair, they at least made an effort with the group shot of the main stars.

Q Awards

With Q magazine probably being the best established monthly music magazine in Britain, it goes without saying that their awards bash is one of the most anticipated of the year. They're able to bring in (from top photo downwards) classic stars (Roger Daltery), huge selling bands (Kaiser Chiefs), colourful guests (Grace Jones), bands of the moment (Vampire Weekend) and daughters of famous rock stars (Kimberley Stewart), which shows the kind of influence the magazine has.
I was doing the red carpet arrivals, so didn't get in to see proceedings inside, but the awards, much like the magazine, seemed to follow a mainly mainstream line. For instance, Coldplay, despite deteriorating in quality with every album they bring out, walked away with a couple of awards.

Michael Parkinson Book Signing

This was quick little job photographing Michael Parkinson - or "the man who's met everyone" as they kept announcing over the loud speaker in Borders - during a book signing session for his new autobiography.
Parky is hugely respected and a national treasure, having seemingly interviewed all the great figures over his long-spanning TV career, but it looked for a while as if there wouldn't be too many people turning up to get their book signed. However, ten minutes before he turned up, the queue quickly expanded giving him the crowd he deserved.

Kate Moss Statue & Razorlight Playing The Forum

Today was the first day that Marc Quinn's solid gold statue of Kate Moss, 'Siren', was displayed, so I went down to the British Museum to get some photos. Artist Quinn said Siren cost £1.5m to make, £1m of which was the price of the gold. He expects it to fetch up to £10m when it is sold following its time with the British Museum in January. Siren is made entirely of 18 carat gold and is the largest gold statue made by man since ancient Egyptian times, weighing 50kg, around the same as its subject.
It was impressive and it was amusing to see unsuspecting museum goers walking past Kate in her yoga pose, with legs around her head, as they made their way past the other ancient statues in the Nereid Gallery.



While there I took some other photographs of the architecture and Ron Mueck's slightly bizarre piece 'Mask II' (below).



I said after the Seasick Steve gig that my Nikon D300 body would come in handy in low light and so it proved tonight for Razorlight's Q Awards launch gig at the Kentish Town Forum. There was barely any light on Johnny Borrell, but being able to bump the ISO up to 2400 without too much noise being created meant I could still get some reasonable images from this.
The band's manager admitted after little effort had been made in terms of lighting and stage set up for this one off show as their UK tour started properly in a month's time, when they would be aiming to get everything right.

Seasick Steve Plays The Royal Albert Hall

There's was more than a hint of surprise in most people's reaction when they heard blues man Seasick Steve was playing the Royal Albert Hall. Especially when you consider the former migrant worker used to travel long distances by hopping freights as a hobo and lived in 56 different houses in the 25 years of marriage with his Norwegian wife.
His break in the UK came when, as an unknown musician, he made his television debut on Jools Holland's 'Annual Hootenanny' BBC TV show, after which his popularity grew extensively. Now, upon releasing his third album, he finds himself performing at the grand, world famous, Royal Albert Hall in his biggest gig to date in the UK.
The Royal Albert Hall is situated in South Kensington, which has come a bit of a second home to me recently, what with London Fashion Week being based here and the two gigs I covered here last week.
And Seasick immediately seemed at home playing to such a large crowd, coming onto stage playing a moving version of 'Amazing Grace'.
I tried out a new body today, the Nikon D300, which I plan to use for gigs because of it's capabilities in low light. It worked fine here, but it'll really come into it's own when the stage lighting is poor.