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I grew up out in the suburbs but London was always about, when my Dad started working in town the appeal of the big city grew on me more and the small trips on the trains and tubes to the tourist spots with my parents excited me. One thing that was always a constant, especially when I began to work in town and live closer towards the centre of town, was that everything I saw of London was from ground level.

The Offices I’ve worked in and flats lived in have all been no more then two or three floors up and whilst some had nice views of the river others had just other buildings and dirty high streets. I’ve been up the London Eye once and took in the view of the main tourist sites you can see from there. The weather wasn’t especially great but you could see quite a few things.

This weekend the impact of London on me changed, I knew London was big, I’ve travelled through most stops on the tubes to nearly all the ends of the lines, and headed further out on the mainline trains but nothing prepared me for the view I got Saturday afternoon.

I’d spent the early afternoon walking through town, I strolled from Bond Street, across Oxford Street and down to Forbidden Planet on Shaftesbury Avenue to look for Christmas presents for friends and family. Whilst the shopping trip wasn’t fruitful for presents it was for me (DMZ vol 1, 100 Bullets Vol 3 and Firefly – Better Days). After leaving the shop I placed a quick call to a friend to see if the arrangements they had said they would be able to sort were still on and they were, and with that I made my way to the junction of Charing Cross Road, Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road.

This is where the fun began. I made my way into Centrepoint and met my friend who spoke to th receptionist who let us through. Standing waiting for the lift nervous excitement was beginning to bubble up and once in the lift a small smile took over my face. We zoomed up missing floor after floro before quickly reaching our destination. I walked out and stepped into Paramount’s bar and dining area taking in the beautiful brass bar and the swish seating, but this wasn’t why I was here. we walked back out and up a short set of stairs. I was here, the viewing gallery. The view took my breath away and the small smile was now a massive grin.

Sunset Over London

The viewing gallery goes round 360 degrees with various armchairs and seating all the way around the middle and it was on one of these chairs I placed my bag and took in the view across West London. The sun was starting to fade and the sky was clear, I’d luckily got good weather and thats whwen I began to get to work. I ended up spending an hour going in circles around the gallery with the light quickly fading to being really quite dark and the city lighting up. Using my tripod and remote I managed to grab plenty of long exposures over the course of the hour trying to fit in the main landmarks and roads.

New Oxford Street

It was great to experience London from a view I had never seen before and my luck with the weather and light made it so much more amazing. To see the rest of the photos from the top of Centrepoint take a look at View From Paramount / Centrepoint – A Flickr Set

Last week I had the lucky pleasure of being able to work on a music video. I got a call from a friend who would be directing the video and asked if I could come along and shoot stills, this was the first time I’ve had the opportunity to work on anything like this and I jumped at the chance.

Exit Calm video shoot

After meeting the other people on the shoot en-route to the location we arrived and began setting up. I duly helped out where I could, moving furniture and holding things whilst the Director and irector of Photography sorted out finer details and the lighting. Part of the setup including mounting a dvd player, projector and speakers onto the camera rig, after a bit of tooing and froing we were ready to go.

Camera rig at the Exit Calm video shoot

The band arrived and we made our introductions before lunch arrived and we all took a break. Once the food was wolfed down Annette got to grips with the make-up for the band. I would like to point out for fear of a beating from the band that they didn’t have much make-up.

And so the real work began, working to a recording of the upcoming single and pre recorded visuals we began the shoot, projecting film across the band and capturing their performance. Things went pretty smootly and the takes went quickly, I snuck round the camera and crawled across the floor, i knelt, I ducked, I got pulled out of the way and by the end of the shoot my legs were aching. I had taken over a thousand photos in that time.

For the few hours we worked together I felt drawn to the band, they had a brotherly spirit between them, they were a family. During the post shoot drinks this tie between them was evident in the recalling of stories from the road and how they met. When I met up with them at their gig at the Barfly in Camden this weekend I saw this bond on stage.

I’ve managed to get the number of shots down to around 300 however I’ve uploaded a few already as a sneak peak for any Exit Calm fans that might stumble across this blog

Exit Calm - Video shoot for next single

The rest of the photos can be found here:

Exit Calm – We’re On Our Own – Behind the scenes on the video shoot

I’ll be updating the set with more photos as I process them.

My new iPhone arrived at 3:30 this afternoon by courier and my excitement is ridiculous, however I have to wait a bit longer, as well as aparant problems with the iTunes activation server I’m at work and my macbook is at home, also coupled by the fact I’m off to a party to say goodbye to a friend who is leaving London I’m just going to have to wait a bit longer to get my grubby mitts all on it.