Moscow

I was recently in Russia for a few days and snapped a few shots of Moscow life, all shot with a bust-up old iPhone 2G on Hipstamatic:

Couple kissing outside Red Square

Building under construction in East Moscow

South Moscow 

Moscow Metro

I don't know what this building is

Shopping street in East Moscow

Mother and child outside South Moscow Metro

View from 23rd floor of an apartment building in South Moscow 

Artwork in Moscow Metro

View on central Moscow from West Moscow apartment

Getting lunch

View on children's playground

In the Mirror

A few more images of pop star Jessie Malakouti on the Femme Fatale tour, this first image was actually a reflection in a mirror ringed by lights providing the flat almost artificial look to the subject ( and acting as a natural ring-light). The second image is of the makeup being applied by the stylist, I quite like the golden tones, quite appropriate for the setting in a Vegas hotel room.

Sensation

I worked at Sensation's first Ocean of White party in London's O2 arena this weekend, slightly departure from my usual role as a videographer but I still had a camera with me and managed a few shots. Sensation really know how to throw a party!

Shut up Olympus

This and This came to my attention over the weekend. Its a viral print campaign by Olympus to highlight the quality of a compact camera and take a stab at camera's in mobile phones for producing "rubbish" photos, I find this vexing, its a blanket statement that amounts to little more than FUD , according to Olympus using a phone camera = bad pictures. The device used to capture and image should never be a measure of an image's value - Damon Winter's cell phone camera shot won third place for feature picture story from Pictures of the Year International in November of last year - Is the camera used to capture the image important? is the image less effective because he used a cell phone?

I shoot with high end Canon camera's for a lot of my professional work but I take a selection of iPhones (International 2G phone for when I am abroad and a UK 3GS) on all my jobs - these are great for unobtrusive photo opportunities where a large lens DSLR will distract or confuse a subject - they are simply ideal for candids. On the recent Femme Fatale tour I used an old iPhone 2G with Hipstamatic to capture most of the candid pictures between filming - a selection of which are below in this post.

Olympus clearly want to protect their business interests in compact camera's but this product segment is under growing risk from high quality mobile device's that, in addition to taking great pictures, can also edit and publish images online - Its no surprise to see the Wall Street Journal adopt iPhone 4 as its ENG device of choice.

In my opinion it comes across as aggressive, fear-mongering advertising and leaves a bit of a bad taste in the mouth.

Femme Fatale Tour

I recently did two weeks out on the West Coast working with support acts NERVO and Jessie and the Toy Boys on Britney Spear's Femme Fatale Tour. The schedule was pretty gruelling with 7 Britney shows and a multitude of club gigs and events in-between these arena gigs. Security was vey tight and I was only allowed to shoot certain artists at certain times (despite working backstage as support crew) however I shot over 500GB of photos, candids and video for webisodes (coming soon..) all in a short 15 day period.

The first work I want to share is a few of my favourite concert pictures:

Malta

Malta is a hostile place. Not the people, who are pretty friendly and speak english - making my life all that bit easier when I'm there but the landscape - Its dry, Its hot, Its exposed.. Its sharp and rocky. The Islands of Comino and Gozo are infinitely better than Malta itself - Peppered with castles and cathedrals and with a rough coastline shredded by the sea winds its a great place to travel to if your interested in the shape of the earth. I was only on the Islands for a few days but managed to see most of the harsh landscape.

Asset management and editing in Apple's Aperture 3 and Adobe Photoshop, Black and white images were resolved from full colour RAW files in Nik software's Silver FX 2.

On the road in black and white

I have sat on this for a long time owing to time constraints with my new contract at the fruit machine - I have been tasked with managing the Creative channel including Logic / Final Cut Pro / Aperture in the UK and Ireland and delivering briefings to Major Accounts on the iPad in business and publishing - but I wanted to release these images as a retrospective on the work I did with the DJ Paul Oakenfold in the US in November of last year.

My job while I was out there was to photograph and video (often simultaneously) and shoot a few back stage videos - I did this all with Canon's fantastic 5D Mk2 and XF300 cameras (although in honesty - most of the video was shot on the 5D Mk2 owing to the ridiculous low light environments) The hours were long and hard as the tour stretched over nearly 20 shows in a month but it was one of the most fantastic experiences of my life - I saw a truly unique view of the east coast and I can't wait to take a crack at it again, I include here some links to a selection of some pictures and videos from the various shows I covered while in the states ( not of all these images are mine, I am usually the first two lines of pictures..)

Chicago Photos
St Louis Photos
Detroit Photos
Tampa Photos

Toronto Video
Washington Video
Atlanta Video
Detroit Video
Chicago Video

Below are some of my favourite images in black and white and a few that are until now unreleased: