I assisted the film maker Grace LaDoja on her short documentary for Mother London, looking at the effect of sports on the lives of teenagers. The short focused on the different backgrounds of teenagers and their coaches and how sport can energise and improve many aspects of a young person’s life.

We saw the impact that inspirational teachers can have on a community- spurring on large groups of teenagers to get involved; constantly challenging themselves, winning championships and learning. Giving direction and discipline. We saw what good facilities can do, and heard so many positive stories.

The documentary is to be used as internal research by Mother.

Grace’s Blog: amazinggracelondon.blogspot.com
Mother London: www.motherlondon.com

I entered my image of Robert Stevenson from “A Silent Film” into The Pop Cop’s annual Scottish Music Photograph of the year competition, which was this year judged by world famous photographer Harry Benson.

Harry has a back catalogue that would be the envy of any photographer- he has photographed multiple US Presidents, The Beatles, Michael Jackson, Clint Eastwood, Churchill, and many other key characters over the decades. Its a great honour to have Harry look at my work.

I was awarded third place in the competition, with the critique “Very moody, a bit of a film noir approach, done very well”. I don’t think I could be happier with that!

Harry’s website: www.harrybenson.com
The Pop Cop- excellent Scottish music blog: thepopcop.blogspot.com

DTours [paper] is a Russian fashion, art and music publication. They emailed me asking about the possibility of using my Cassette Tape Anatomy series as part of a spread in their magazine, which I was more than happy to do. I think the result is excellent- I didn’t expect these images to work as part of a magazine feature- though it is very strange seeing my photographs next to text in a language I can’t read! See some of the Dtours spreads using my Cassette Tape images below:

Check out DTours at: www.dtourspaper.com

I’ve put together some of the video work I did with Uber for Eastman. Our brief was to shoot the wind turbines they run at their site in the Lake District, so that Eastman can use the footage to promote their use of sustainable energy. There is more information about the project on my portfolio website, and in my original blog post here: Link.

So now I have all of my blog posts arranged in categories, and each blog post has its own separate page, meaning I can add extra images and video as needed. Its also a lot more search engine friendly, and ties in to Twitter, Vimeo, and the rest of them nicely. For the Wordpress users out there, I’m using Smart Archives on my archives page, a script called “get the image” to display a preview thumbnail for each blog post on the main page, and Fancybox to control my images and galleries on the blog post pages.

Wordpress is open source- you can get it from www.wordpress.com

Here’s a couple of short clips I shot while helping out at this years onedotzero_adventures in motion festival at the BFI Southbank in September.

The first is the “graffonic: virtual spraypaint” installation- which let visitors draw on a wall electronically, and also gave an audio reaction to each movement.

The second is a timelapse of the festival identity- a massive projection outside the BFI, which could be interacted with using a Nokia phone, and which drew in online talk about the festival. Amazing work, and one of the parts of the festival which drew most discussion.

You can see the full highlights of the festival on the onedotzero vimeo page, here: http://www.vimeo.com/7541175

Much thanks to The Skinny for inviting me down- and all the bands, musicians, DJs and entertainers who made it such a great night.

Read The Skinny’s preview article here: The Skinny & Ten Tracks Twisted Kids Birthday Party

“onedotzero_adventures in motion is acclaimed by artists, audiences and creative industry alike for being the world leader in audio-visual arts and entertainments at the forefront of a new festival experience which combines collaborative music, film and live performance, and playful interactivity, digital arts and culture.”

-onedotzero.com

The yearly onedotzero_adventures in motion festival just finished at the BFI Southbank, and I have been there over the course of the five days helping with the documentation of the event- photographing and filming the various interactive installations, workshops, and night time bar events.

There was much stunning work on display- from interactive installations to short films. The H5 retrospective and UK premiere of their new short film “Logorama”, the wavelength screening programme and interactive identity projected in massive scale on the National Theatre were all highlights for me. Every night also had an event at the BFI bar- live AV sets, breakdancers, and DJs all had their night.

More on the events of the festival on the onedotzero blog and vimeo channel:

http://www.onedotzero.com/blog

http://www.vimeo.com/onedotzero

I was part of this years onedotzero_cascade event- an education program for graduates designed to give the opportunity to collaborate and solve a brief in a multidisciplinary team. Our brief was to improve the city using small interventions, and we presented the solution at the onedotzero_adventures in motion festival, held this month at the BFI in London.

Our presentation “Its Nice to be Nice”, gave positive reinforcement for doing nice things, such as holding the door for someone, standing on the right on an escalator, or recycling.

Our solution is light-hearted,  part of the everyday life and designed to be unexpected. We presented a hand dryer which plays the harmonica when used, an escalator which lights up when a person stands on the right, and a recycling bin that sings back ten green bottles when used, for example.

I also contributed to a panel discussion with practitioners and fellow Cascade participant Laura Bowman on what the industry and education can learn from programmes such as Cascade.

These are the people I worked on the Cascade brief with:

Simon Yewdall – Illustrator – www.simonyewdall.com
Annabel Innes – Graphic Designer – www.annabelinnes.co.uk
Toby Burkill – Graphic Designer – www.toby-b.com
Sarah Franco Alves – Moving image designer – www.littlescissors.co.uk
Callum Parish – Moving Image and Graphic Design – www.callumparish.com
Dan Sanders  – Architect – www.worldofdan.com
Muna Mohammed – Advertising and Marketing

I was asked to shoot the Malcolm Middleton show last night in Edinburgh, part of the Edge festival (The new name for T on the Fringe). He played out to a packed Cabaret Voltaire, and the lack of photo pit made things just that bit harder! A great set and enthusuastic crowd made the gig a joy to shoot.

Read the review online here: http://www.theskinny.co.uk