A night off… so, Cathouse?

On October 15, 2017October 15, 2017 By Lee JonesIn Pals, Writing1 Comment

Plans I made last night went tits up so I headed to the casino, made a little money, and then headed to Catty for a night out as Stephen was in taking photos.

Jazz had a couple of pals visiting from England and also headed out. We all kept bumping into each other throughout the night. I also kept running into my pal Emily who was out with a couple of pals and I haven’t seen her in way too long. That’s what I love about Catty, familiar faces appear everywhere.

The club is daaaark, and I was shooting without a flash. As a result, the focus didn’t hit 100% of the time. All photos were at 3200 iso (and still mostly pushed 4 stops), around 1/60th, shooting wide open at f2 giving my my new xf35mmf2 lens a serious work out.

I’ve said it before a million times, but the Fuji jpegs are stunning. I feel like this could wind up some tech-snobs, but even with the grain simulation turned off, the noise structure on the jpegs is beautiful. Even if you don’t agree, and the only negative thing you can comment on is a photo being ‘too noisy’ then most of the time it’s not even a comment worth voicing.

Anyway, enough of that. I’m paying the price of two consecutive nights out right now and I need to go clean the vomit outta my sink, and also watch House.

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Back to Hartwood Hospital, with Amber & Des

On October 10, 2017October 10, 2017 By Lee JonesIn Day Trippin', Photography, Writing2 Comments

I’ve been meaning to make sense of the hundreds of photographs I took while Amber and Des were staying with me in Glasgow but to be honest it’s too damn difficult, so I’m going to settle for occasionally dropping a day or two in a blog every now and then and maybe write a little about it.

While they were over I wanted to make sure they saw some rad stuff – They’re from America where I’m pretty sure the oldest building is only 5 years old or something, so I thought Hartwood Hospital would be a good shout. I don’t know how old this building is, but it’s falling apart, has been set on fire a bunch of times and also abandoned for years.

I’d been before and it looks rad.

I feel like we were hungover, I can’t remember. We grabbed some food and headed there on the train.

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Save Movement Scotland: Become a Pig Lover

On October 10, 2017 By Lee JonesIn Politics & Protest, WritingLeave a comment

I headed to Edinburgh on Monday to get involved in some vegan activism. Holding up informative placards, distributing fliers, engaging in conversation with the public, and offering free vegan food as demonstration for cruelty-free alternatives to pork.

I found it pretty interesting that this tour is financed by the European Union (allegedly costing £1.5 million) to tour Europe and promote pig corpse as “top quality food” all the while “respecting the environment” and the “welfare of animals”. During my time there the bus had no customers, and I’ve since read that there were no customers throughout the day with them even sending staff away within the first few hours.

Yep, £1.5 million well spent.

What bugged me the most was their “how are we not going to like an animal that gives us so much?” spiel. Nonsense like that don’t hide the fact the pig actually gives us nothing, we take its life.

Their website – Pork Lovers Tour – is atrocious and their social media support is pathetic. I tagged a couple of photos with their official Instagram only to find it has 4 followers.

Admittedly I didn’t talk nearly as much as the others (who did an excellent job) as I’m not that much of a talker. I observed, listened, and spoke when spoken to. This was my first time actively getting involved in street vegan activism, I was pretty surprised at the amount of support we had. The support from the public was lovely, and even the folk who chimed in with obvious lines like “but it tastes so good” stuck around for conversation, and actually left taking it all a little more seriously.

There was one guy, though. Smug, shouting “we’re the top of the food chain, y’know!” in passing with a grin on his face unwilling to stop and chat with us.

Well, we’re not at the top of the food chain; but even if we were, we’d still have the choice.

The comfort of being a drunk party photographer

On October 2, 2017October 2, 2017 By Lee JonesIn NightlifeLeave a comment

For a few months I’d been feeling like my photos are mostly shit, and that was down to feeling less connected with whatever was going on around me, and with my anxiety, and the realisation of that anxiety being an actual thing that I needed to deal with.

Since almost the beginning of August I stopped myself drinking anything but water for a solid month. I was curious to see if it’d make me feel any different. I missed tea, a lot (I now have an occasional cup of tea, like once a week maybe?), drinking water was and still is boring, but aside from that it was fine – In fact it’s generally done me a ton of good; my moods are more manageable, I’m less irritable, more rational, I don’t really mind getting out of bed early, and I don’t ache anymore. The only problem being when I was out, I missed alcohol.

It’s easy to think that shooting club nights are just the same night repeated drink after drink, but when they come into their own it’s hard to explain, especially to those who don’t do it. I can look back at certain photos from different nights and remember entire stories of situations that happened on each particular night. Since allowing myself to drink once a week, coinciding wonderfully with me taking party photos and finding a balance and purpose within that chaos, that’s what the past few weeks have been feeling like and that’s what I’ve been missing from my life recently. I feel it coming back and it’s familiar and comforting, and I fucking love it. Looking at some of my party photos, especially recently, I’m feeling good about my photos again.

I’m an anti-social fuck at the best of times, so I need to focus on getting out a little more to surround myself with familiar drunken faces and have a goddamn dance because if everything is as shit as we believe then we may as well feel good about it together.

Newcastle’s Royal Station Hotel with JAZZebell_

On September 20, 2017September 21, 2017 By Lee JonesIn Day Trippin', Girls, WritingLeave a comment

On Monday I headed to Newcastle with Jazz as she was invited down for a “creatives party” studio shoot by a model who was having the event as part of her birthday celebrations.

Jazz managed to arrange a couple of shoots in our hotel room for the day before, so I hung around performing my duties of taking photos for her behind-the-scenes snapchat content, while also grabbing a few photos myself.

I’ll post another blog featuring some of my ‘behind-the-scenes’ shots along with photos from our time in Newcastle. This post is for our quick morning shoot.

We had a late night before eating a ridiculous amount of chinese food that I’m pretty sure almost put me into a coma. I woke up later than usual, with the driest throat I think I’ve ever had. After a very quick pack, we were left with literally 5 minutes to shoot before check out.

I think Jazz finished getting dressed in the corridor.

Anyway, here’s 15 or so photos from the set. There’s another 25 exclusive to my b-sides blog which you can bag access to right here.

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Hats & Butterflies

On September 16, 2017 By Lee JonesIn Girls, WritingLeave a comment

It’s currently freshers week and the past couple of nights I’ve been in Cathouse doing party photography duties. Thursday I got to shoot Bury Tomorrow, and last night was a Disney Bar Crawl followed by shooting You Me At Six. I’ll link up some of those photos at a later date.

Freshers is always interesting; Meeting new faces that are gonna become familiar real quick.

Anyway, this morning I woke up with a heavy hangover and Jazz had a gone out for a shoot. She came back a few hours later and lifted up her top and showed me that she was covered in butterflies, so I grabbed my camera and we did a quick shoot.

The hat in these photos was knitted by my mum. She’s making her way through a mountain of wool she acquired from some dead persons house. So if you’re wanting a hat ready for winter, drop me a message and get your orders in. I think she’s charging £15 per hat and you can probably pick the colours, too.

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49 SECONDS: Episode 1.

On September 8, 2017 By Lee JonesIn Day Trippin'Leave a comment

Last week, a friend passed on to me a palm-sized camera. It’s an old and small waterproof, bombproof Fuji thing. As it slides into my pocket I felt compelled to carry it everywhere and it turns out that recording with it is straight forward and it kicks out enough pixels to be usable.

A while ago I started a vlog on my YouTube channel and I’ve got a bunch of content to catch up with but I want to do something that feels effortless to keep regular content on the go, so I decided to allow myself to film 7 seconds of video a day. Over 7 days that’s 49 seconds of video… so until I have a better idea, forget, get bored, or die, there’ll be one episode a week uploading to my channel.

Here’s a couple of snapshots that I particularly like.

Shout out to my pal Dave who I uploaded something not too dissimilar to this from his trip to Germany. As soon as I got this camera in my hand his video sprung to mind.

It’s fast, but not *too* fast. There’s a bunch to take in, and I think it flows in an interesting way. I’ve already managed to capture my best buddy proposing to his lass, so I feel it’s gonna be interesting to look back on whatever snapshots I choose later down the line.

You can view the full thing right here.