When travelling I always travel extremely light. I only take one small backpack that contains all of my clothes, my camera and 2 lenses. The second lens is the very light and compact Canon EF 50mm f1.8 and it’s there more as a failsafe rather than anything else. This time I took a flash – just in case – crammed in a gorillapod – useful for self-portraits – and I even took my battery charger.

Towards the end of my time in Amsterdam I was in Utrecht and I’d just been let down by my 5th and final model. I was making my way out of town towards Tivoli de Helling when a girl on a bike stopped and asked if I wanted a lift somewhere. As luck would have it she was heading in my direction and I hopped on board. Touched by the kindness of strangers I asked if she would like an impromptu photo shoot. And that’s how I got to photograph my first stranger.

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Even with a passerby feeding the pigeons and seagulls right in front of me my seagull shot was still hard to capture taking about 150 frames. It was taken with a 55mm lens and hasn’t been cropped. On the other hand I only took 3 frames to get the shot of the robin. In the first frame his head was turned away, the second frame is the one shown here and the third frame was empty – he’d flown away. I was unprepared for the grey squirrel. The longest lens that I was carrying was 60mm. So I had to be patient, stay in the same place and wait for the squirrel to come to me as I had no food to tempt it. Again this picture is uncropped except for a little loss of image from straightening the horizon. The monkey was taken in a zoo behind glass. I didn’t have my polarising filter with me so all I could do was use my own reflection to minimise glare. Lastly the four flying jackdaws is one of my favourites. The graphic designer in me loves the simplicity. It reminds me of ink on paper. Of Japanese calligraphy. That’s why I called it ‘Haiku’.

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I’d already seen Bernhoft perform solo twice in London back in September 2010 but I was eager to see him perform with his backing band. And the only way that was going to happen is if I travelled to his Scandinavian home grounds. Of course I wanted to photograph Bernhoft’s live performances in Copenhagen and Roskilde but I wasn’t able to secure a photo pass in time.

I’d also tried to arrange some photoshoots with models while I was over in Copenhagen but I wasn’t having much luck there either. Except for one that is. I travelled over Øresund bridge to Sweden to have a look around Malmö and met up with a model there. The weather was pretty dull, wet and grim but we had a great time and made some good images. I can’t help but be amused that I used one of the great landmarks of Malmö – the windmill in Slottsparken – not as a pretty backdrop but as both shelter from the elements and as a way of getting a plain white background.

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Lighting in small venues throws up many problems. Often the lights are poorly positioned, static or dim and pointing anywhere except for the performer’s face. Case in point being this Hallowe’en gig that I photographed in a basement club featuring support band Hot Damn and headlined by The Guns. The lighting is coming from both sides via two banks of LED strips. The lighting scheme cycles from red and blue, green and red – in short all of the colour combinations that a camera hates. It not only makes metering a nightmare it can also make auto-focusing difficult and obliterate detail.

This is where shooting in RAW comes in really handy. I set my camera’s preview to mono so that I can forget about the garish colours. RAW still keeps all of the colour information so that you can deal with it later.

The photographs below were improved in post-production by using a variety of techniques all within Adobe Camera RAW (ACR). One of the first things that you can do is to forget about the awful colour and convert straight to black and white. However, if you want to keep some of the original colour in the images then lowering the vibrance and saturation are the obvious choices.

Sometimes even this isn’t enough. Next I start tweaking the white balance – both temperature and tint. Often to combat such huge pure primary colour casts my white balance settings end up all the way to the left or all the way to the right – a huge shift. It’s amazing how much detail you can bring back.

Even after all this some red-looking photographs may still look a bit red and you just can’t get rid of it. Last resort is to dial in some split toning for the highlights and the shadows. Or of course carry on into Photoshop for more precision work.

Gear: Canon 60D, EF-S 17-55mm
Settings: f2.8, ISO 1600-6400

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Though it was a bit cold outside with high winds lashing the whole of the UK Leja suggested trying some photos outside the church. She had a make-up change in mind and had brought along some material that complimented the dress.

So we stayed awhile and took some more shots. As well as using the church as a backdrop I also shot against dark greenery and against the sky which enabled me to isolate Leya in post-production and get some different looking imagery. Am I glad I listened to Leja or what?

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I started a Google crash course in ‘fashion for dummies’ (ie. men) gathering random bits of information about ruffles, boleros, french pleats and crinoline. I thought about hiring a proper Victorian costume but I figured that I could buy myself something for the same price and either reuse it or sell it on. It was here that I lost many hours in online retro clothing stores, fashion blogs, looking at high street sales and generally becoming more obsessed about women’s clothes than a man of my years has any right to be.

A friend knew that I was looking for a church and recommended one to me. The church he recommended to me serves a community so small that regular services are few and far between and its doors are often closed. Fortunately I noticed that the church was open to the public for a limited period at the end of summer and I was able to get inside and take some test shots with my brother as model. The interior convinced me that I couldn’t use any old dress for the shots that I had in mind. Whilst I had already found, and bought, some Victorian inspired clothing from eBay it wasn’t quite right. I had a shirt. I had a knee-length dress. I wanted a near floor length dress. So the search continued.

By this time the church had closed its doors to the public again. I hadn’t made any enquiries about it. I didn’t have a model. And I didn’t have a dress. Happily I met Leja, the model, a few weeks later. I started talking to the church about the possibility of using it as a location citing Vermeer’s ‘The Milkmaid’ as my inspiration. And my dress? That was in the post. It cost me £24.

I was allowed to use the church due to the goodwill of the benfice and the warden so, when the warden called time after one hour, I stopped shooting and packed up as fast as I could. I could have taken photographs in that church all day. But, even with my first set-up only minutes into the shoot, I knew that I had the shot that I had come for.

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Well, if the model is willing and you’re able to protect your camera from the worst of the weather then why not go ahead? Because it’s a fact that an overcast day can often be a photographer’s best friend. The clouds produce a giant soft light source that may look dull and drab to the human eye but to the camera’s lens it’s a godsend as the difference between highlights and shadows fits comfortably within the limited dynamic range of the average digital camera.

And here I had it all. Grey skies, light drizzle and a willing model, Leja Larska, who was less concerned about the conditions that I was. Leja and I spent a couple of hours together walking around a local park and gardens looking for interesting opportunities. And you don’t need many changes of clothes either to get different looks – just a few layers that you can add or take away. I love working this way – on the hoof.

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This year I discovered a great new band. Vintage Trouble. Who would have thought that in this short time one of my photos would be featured on the band’s 2011 tour t-shirt?

Back in February I saw that Vintage Trouble were doing a small clutch of dates in London, some closed gigs for industry but also a few open to the public. I travelled up to Camden and witnessed one of the best gigs of my life.

Back then no-one really knew what was happening with the band, not even the band themselves, they were just having a good time living from gig to gig. There was a good chance that they would head straight back to their base in LA. But a guest appearance on ‘Later with Jools Holland’ and the burgeoning interest of the UK public changed all that. They ended up staying here until August and I saw and photographed the band 4 more times in that period.

Ty Taylor from the band saw the first lot of pictures that I had taken from their gig at St. David’s Hall in Cardiff and got in touch suggesting that we get together a week later when they played at Moles in Bath. The whole band was cool and allowed me to melt into the background and get some pictures of them at soundcheck and backstage.

Ty was very encouraging about my photography from the off. So it was fantastic that my picture of Ty is featured on the t-shirt design. The picture that the band chose for the t-shirt was taken in Cardiff at the Big Weekend open air festival. I had a press pass so was able to get into the photo pit for the first 3 songs of Vintage Trouble’s set. But this picture wasn’t one of those. As soon as my time in the pit was over I handed in my hi vis vest and I was back outside with the audience walking around and looking for more shots. And there are always more shots to be had with this highly visual band as this picture proves. Whilst the press pit does afford a great degree of movement and freedom it’s also true that if you’re in the audience and you pick your spot you may just capture something really good.

Get your limited edition Vintage Trouble tour t-shirts here everybody!

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