Boyzone

Highlight: After a year of avoiding gigs I decided Wembley Arena was calling and who better to see than a good old fashioned boy band.

Lowlight: Forgotten how deep, wide and high the stage is.
Fill in: Forgot the trick of bringing a camera box that one can stand on - although this is not always allowed. Also forgot how to look through camera with one eye and keep the other on the TV cameras so their booms don't whack you in the head or their cables don't trip you over....

Covered this to get my hand back in at shooting arena gigs. Pop bands pose a difficult problem as everyone is always keen to get them together and they are invariably spread out across the whole of the stage.

The Boyz were lowered down from the ceiling which was pretty spectacular - and without a safety net!



Tech Spec: Nikon D3 - ISO 800, Aperture F4 (to make most of light but also keep depth of field shallow). WB - daylight (spotlights tend to be daylight balanced).No flash allowed but I would not have used it anyway as the light was bright. Shutter 1/250 (the boys move pretty fast). Only difficulty was the contrast was low due to lots of backlighting causing glare even with the lenshoods on, so in the processing I compressed the tonal range at the black end for deeper blacks and richer blues.

Dotty Yoga

Highlight: Getting a silver award from SWPP for one of the Gold images!- maybe I should try a silver image....

Lowlight: Feeling extremely unfit as Dotty arranged her body into the most amazing of contortions.
Fill in: I wanted smoke for a backdrop and photographed samples of smoke from a joss stick to use in Photoshop (jasmine - house smelt like a hippie boudior for days).

Dotty is an actress who also teaches yoga. These pictures were for her promotional flyer. However Dotty is extremely creative and the normal yoga images were not going to cut it. So we decided to paint her completely gold. Poor Dotty did get terrible goosebumps but the results were brilliant - literally!



Tech Spec:
A grey backdrop with a 150mm octagonal softbox to right of subject about waist height. Fill in spotlight from back left. Large white reflector on left. Grey backdrop was erased in photoshop and circle drawn in. The smoke was made with brushes I had created from samples of smoke from a joss stick.

Sony Brits Aftershow Party 2011

Highlight: Free bar, free food, the only photographer allowed into the party and a celeb packed room to photograph.

Lowlight: The season's colour is black and the inside of Groucho's is black with the occasional mirror - Flash photo hell.
Fill in: Outrageous platforms are in and for someone who can barely stand a pair of comfy trainers on her feet, having to wear a pair of two inch heeled boots for the evening just so I'm not shooting up everyone's nose is pure agony.

So it's a free full bar, endless canapes and an evening with award winning artists and big wigs from the music machine that is The Brits. Unfortunately for me, after shooting all the arrivals outside with the paps and the cheering crowds, then finding all the celebs again inside, getting shots for the sponsors, shots for the organisers and then more shots of everyone else for fear of offending someone I should have shot but didn't shoot first time round there is only time to down a couple of cocktails and a left over mozzarello cheese ball before having to head off home to process the images ready for morning.



For editorial enquiries please contact Hayley Madden or Sony Music UK.

Tech Spec: Nikon D3 - ISO 400, Aperture F5.6 (for optimum sharpness)). WB - Flash (especially important as against white background). Speedlight used but I would like to get a side mount for the flash someday to avoid horrible shadow when turning camera on side. As it was I shot everythign landscape and cropped.. Shutter 1/250 . I over exposed by one stop to compensate for white background.

Chinese New Year 2011

Highlight: This first event of the year in Trafalgar Square always starts with a bang - literally.

Lowlight: Squeezing through the crowds in Chinatown with two D3s, a 70-200 F2.8 and a laptop is never any fun, but at least it did not snow like last year.
Fill in: Although I look Chinese I don't speak a word of anything vaguely oriental. This is the hardest event for me to cover in terms of communication as everyone assumes I speak the lingo.

I have covered this event for the Mayor's Press Office for a number of years and it doesn't get any easier. The event is spread over three locations - Trafalgar Square Shaftesbury Avenue and Chinatown. And it is always packed so much so that a one way system operates for much of the day for pedestrians. I lose a few pounds just carrying my equipment round.

The brief is to get all the performers on and off stage, VIPS backstage, the crowds, the various areas and the sponsors logos. In the backstage area everyone speaks manly chinese but unfortunately I don't understand a word which can be an advantage.






Tech Spec: I walk round with two cameras to save changing lenses - one with 24- 70mm F2.8, (this body has a speedlight mounted for fill in flash) and one 70-200mm F2.8. I use a double harness to carry the cameras so the weight is on my shoulders and not my neck. Light conditions constantly changing so I shoot manually as I may need to compensate for bright skies, bakclights on stage, dark backgrounds and fireworks!! I do this all manually as I find it quicker and more accurate. Any I get wrong are adjusted in Photoshop later.

Reggae Britannia

Highlight: The Barbican hold a gig for all those British Reggae artists from my youth - and we get to do the soundcheck!

Lowlight: Soundchecks always run late and Reggae Artists even later, so the cumulative effect could mean we'll be there for the concert anyway.
Fill in: By some amazing quirk in the time space continuum and some obscure law where the off beat reggae rhythms collide with the Bermuda Triangle that is the Barbican layout the soundcheck is only an hour late. A minor miracle.

The Guardian were after a shot from the gig but who they wanted exactly was anyone's guess so I had to shoot them all as I didn't know who the journalist was or what their did it for them when it came to British Reggae - Red Red Wine or just a Nite Club? As it was the soundcheck we could shoot pretty much from anywhere so it was a 50mm and 85mm F2 lenses (so I could make the most of the light) and a lot of sitting around.


Click here for The Guardian review

Tech Spec: Nikon D700 - ISO 6400, Aperture F2.8 (Basically the light was hard so needed all the help I could get to keep shutter speed up). WB - daylight/tungsten (the lights changed for each artist). No flash allowed. Shutter 1/125 (as I said - light was hard. I'd ideally like to be on 1/250 to completely freeze action). Lighting was very uneven so had to wait for artists to be looking in right direction to get good lighting,