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?

On Friday morning the Pure Rawk crew made the pilgrimage to Knebworth for Sonisphere 2011. We had a busy and exhausting few days – watching and interviewing bands, taking pics, singing, shouting and dancing, and generally having a fantastic time. The coverage will unfold on the Pure Rawk website over the coming days, while I try to keep my eyes propped open at work by day and wade through hundreds of images by night. My pics will be going up on the Pure Rawk Photo gallery, as well as the Pure Rawk Facebook page, and some favourites will go in my blogs or gallery pages here too.

With an arena photo pass our coverage was limited to the Bohemia, Jagermeister and Red Bull stages plus the festival grounds, sadly with no photography permitted of acts on either of the main stages, even from the audience (there was one exception to this which will be my next-but-one blog post!).

Here are a few shots from the weekend:

Pulled Apart By Horses performing on the Bohemia stage

Cancer Bats performing on the Bohemia stage

Sonic Boom Six headlining the Red Bull tent

Ty Taylor of Vintage Trouble performing on the Bohemia stage

Revoker

Last week I headed over to Shepherd’s Bush Empire once again to see Cinderella on their 25th anniversary tour.
As far as I knew, I was photographing the whole show, but when I arrived I just had a pass for second support Houston, and was unfortunately unable to sort anything else out on the night, so there are no official pics of Cinderella, I’m afraid! (I’ve since heard that they have recently been using a very restrictive photo contract so chances are I wouldn’t have been shooting them anyway).

Anyhoo, that didn’t stop me having a great night, and with the lighting being especially fab I was able to get some great shots of Houston – you can head over to Pure Rawk to see more.

I went along to The Social in Little Portland Street to see Vintage Trouble in action for the first time – thanks to Duff Press! Events like this are all about intimacy, and it doesn’t get much more intimate than a venue where a front row six people wide is a squeeze… what a great gig it was, too. See Pure Rawk for more pics.

Being busy is both a blessing and a curse. As most will know, I have a full-time day job that’s NOT photography, and when things blow up at work, fitting everything in can be something of a challenge! The last couple of weeks have been flat out, and this has forced me to move back a couple of projects (like relaunching the website) due to there just not being enough hours in the day. Still I’m happy to say that I’m getting there.

In the meantime, the website had its own birthday cake (thanks Vicky!) and via the Facebook page I gave away a camera charm necklace.

Sadly I’m not at Download this weekend but I’ll be following the web stream as much as I can and doing virtual download from a comfy chair with a steady flow of tea, happy in the knowledge that it’s nearly time for the Metal Hammer Golden Gods awards!

I have a birthday coming up – bandsonstage.co.uk will be five years old on June 1st. To celebrate that milestone I’ll be re-launching the site, making my new photo gallery live (I’m theming it and adding content at the moment and am quite happy with how it’s coming along), and giving stuff away via my facebook page – join up if you don’t want to miss out!