Ever get in one of those moods where you want to trash your website and start over? I won’t be doing that (she says, hovering over the delete key), however I have got some bits to add and some bits to change – by the end of February you’ll be able to see a fullscreen portfolio slideshow on this site, and details of new and updated services for 2012.

This weekend I attended a dance photography workshop at Village Studios in Bexley, run by Andrew Appleton. I’ve never thought about dance photography before but in many ways it’s very similar to music photography, especially in stage lighting and timing. I came away with a lot of ideas! Our model was a lovely dancer called Emily who was fantastic to work with. The shot below is an outtake, but one of my favourites and something a bit different for me.

The last few weeks of 2011 went by at a whirlwind pace for me. When I last posted at the end of November I had just joined Wolfsbane’s tour – I covered six dates in total, which fitted in very nicely with covering Hard Rock Hell for Pure Rawk.

Hard Rock Hell is one of my favourite events – it’s a great atmosphere, and always eventful, though this year not always in the right way as I had problems with a corrupted memory card, and a strained wrist (tip: when 20 kilos of luggage is about to fall off a kerb, if the bag is padded, it’s probably better to let it fall than try to catch it and injure yourself in the process). After a couple of weeks of enforced rest, carrying nothing heavier than a cup of tea, I was able to start hauling a camera around again.

Ginger's birthday show at Islington Academy

December held one of the highlights of the year, Ginger’s birthday gig, for which I reprised my role as official photographer, and my day job kept me particularly busy as I had a lot of projects to finish before going away just before Christmas for a month in Mexico. I’m now back home and I’m so relaxed I’m practically comatose (although I was so burnt out it took me a good half of the break to calm down and not wake up every morning thinking about the day job!). While I was away I was able to think clearly about the areas that I’d like to concentrate on this year, and building on the photography and media work I did last year is something I have a lot of plans for. Watch this space!

This weekend I was in Glasgow and Liverpool with Wolfsbane – what a great couple of days – both gigs were fantastic and the crowds were loving it!

Standing on tiptoe on a ladder isn’t something I do every day (clumsy + scared of heights), but sometimes you have to throw caution to the wind…

The plan for today was very simple – paint the ceiling in the spare room, and nip to B&Q to pick up some wallpaper.

Apparently I’ll go to extremes to avoid DIY – instead I revamped my website and business cards, themed my Zenfolio site to match and made it live, and inhaled about six gallons of tea. Now I’ve got the mammoth task of sorting out how much of my archive ends up on the new site!

I’m very happy to say that one of my photos from Sonisphere is being used to promote Ginger’s December tour.
If you don’t yet have a ticket for one of these dates, don’t leave it much longer and risk missing out! The line-up is fantastic and you will have a great time.

My last blog was in July? Whoops. I am not exactly the worlds most consistent blogger!

Since my last update I’ve worked at Bloodstock festival, caught a few more dates on Ginger’s acoustic tour, been to Stormin’ the Castle, witnessed Blaze and Jase’s Incredible Acoustic Tour, filmed a music video for Los Mariachi Gorillas de London, photographed loads more bands (including Soil, Puddle of Mudd, Head Cat and Joe Bonamassa), and completed the artwork (16 page booklet including live shots and the night sky as seen from Alice Springs – who knew my holiday photos would ever come in useful?) for the forthcoming Wolfsbane album, ‘Wolfsbane Save The World’, which I am VERY excited about.

Probably the best place to see evidence of all of this is on my Facebook photography page which I update pretty regularly – please like it if you want to keep up to date with my work!

Here’s the album cover:
. Also coming to a t-shirt near you soon!

I had a great weekend at High Voltage – quality bands and quality weather! I spent Saturday shooting from the audience and Sunday shooting from the pit, and got a nice variety of shots. One thing that High Voltage had that other festivals are lacking is the genius idea of a ferris wheel overlooking the stage – what better place to catch the headliners from?

My coverage will be popping up on the Pure Rawk website over the coming week, but here’s a taster – that great view from the sky:

This was an unexpected treat – on Friday I stepped in for Uber Rock to shoot Metallica from the photo pit. Thanks to Tazz and Adam for sorting this! You’ll notice that there’s only one photo of Lars, this a combination of high stage, short photographer, drum kit being quite far back on the stage, and me not having a set of steps due to not expecting to spend any time in the photo pit over the weekend – but he didn’t escape me completely!

Going to High Voltage? There’s still time to get tickets…click on the poster to buy!

Pure Rawk’s Nix and I went along last year and had a fantastic time – most of the weekend was spent running between stages to make sure we caught as many bands as we could and soaking up the atmosphere.

Here are a few shots from last year’s event – you can see more on my High Voltage Flickr collection :

…and what better way to end a working day than grabbing some pizza and cider and watching ZZ Top?