Party photographer, and I play in bands you've probably never heard of.
I used to dot around and sleep on floors, sofas, spare beds and the like, but now I live full time in Glasgow.
While in Newcastle I had planned to do some of my own shoots with other models, but due to some last minute cancellations that never happened so instead I’m posting this set I shot with JAZZebell_ in our hotel room.
I was feeling utterly dreadful when shooting so we didn’t shoot much more than 15 minutes. I even gave up half way through but was talked into continuing at Jazz’s insistence.
That said, we shot 108 photos for the set and they’re available on Patreon right now.
James dropped us off by the A19 to help our hitch, but we kicked around for an hour and didn’t get picked up. It was boiling hot, and we were carrying everything and wearing our coats and we ended up resorting to heading back into the centre to catch a direct bus to Newcastle as Jazz had a shoot arranged in Newcastle, and we didn’t want to be late. It was that hot I couldn’t even be bothered to grab my camera from my bag, so there’s no photos here.
On the bus the morning got worse ’cause we had a last minute bust up with the booking agent for the apartment we had secured and that left us with nowhere to stay. Between that and not wanting to be late, we opted to just spend the same amount of money on a hotel for the full four nights instead of two and have it all dealt with so we weren’t stressing. It wasn’t ideal, but also not too many photographers are booking models at the moment apparently, so losing the apartment wasn’t the end of the day.
Just one of those things.
We met Arrow Photographic, and he drove us along the river to take photos of Jazz for an hour. They shot by the river and then also under the A1 on the way back to the car. After having a photographer bail on Jazz in Middlesbrough, it was good to have something to go to plan. Fair to say we both felt better then.
On Monday I left Scarborough along with JAZZebell_ as we decided to go on a hitch adventure.
The purpose really is to travel around so Jazz can work with photographers and so I can do my own thing and document the whole process, along with taking my own photos on the way.
The afternoon we left it was pissing it with rain, and to give us a little boost my mum dropped us both off in Pickering. We started walking toward Thirsk to then hopefully end up on the A19 to Middlesbrough where we’d planned to end up that night.
It took us maybe 25 minutes to get picked up, but by the time we were out of Pickering a couple stopped to pick us up. They told us about how they used to hitch back in the day, and still continue to pick up hitchers on the rare chance they see them. They were genuinely gutted they couldn’t take us further, and we were dropped off out in the rain about halfway to Thirsk. We carried on and it wasn’t long before another couple saw us and took pity. They said we looked miserable in the rain, but I know I was just doubting that an Audi driver would actually stop for us. I was wrong, and they were lovely.
Saturday night marked my last social night out in Scarborough before heading out on the road hitching with JAZZebell_ on Monday.
A few of my pals were involved in the Antikz UV Party and I’d managed to bag photo duties.
I drank water all night, which I’m kinda impressed with given my anxiety earlier on in the evening.
Jazz, Beth, and Dan got involved, and was good to see some other familiar faces before I got gone.
I think this will be my last night out until I’m back in Glasgow in a few weeks.
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I was staying with my friend Emily during my visit to Glasgow last week, and I managed to sort a shift in Catty so we headed there for a night of it.
When I moved back to Scarborough in January I had a stab at trying to get back into shooting party photos and aside from Por Favor / Rebel Radics, it just ain’t the same. That said, I’m actually heading into town this evening to shoot Antikz so I’m hoping that’s gonna be a good one and I’m gonna do it sober again.
Last week I made my way up to Glasgow and in order to break the journey up because I was doing it all on a bus I stopped off in Newcastle to see Kitty as I hadn’t seen her since early last year.
I arrived late afternoon and headed straight to hers and stocked up on some food as we were gonna be staying in rather than heading out for the night.
Pretty much as soon as we stepped through the door we started taking photos. I think we did like 30 minutes or something, and as ever it was straightforward. We’ve never really planned anything so why start now. Since I’ve switched up how I shoot this is the first time I’ve shot Kitty with flash, and I think this is also the first time I’ve photographed her when I’ve not been wasted/hungover so that was new…
The photos get NSFW pretty quick so I’ve gotten all the writing out the way so now you can check out the photos.
30 weeks ago a friend gave me an old video camera and it was small and fit in my pocket and also claimed to be virtually indestructible so I figured I’d take it with me everywhere. I decided to document 7 seconds a day for a week to see how it all looked in one 49 second video.
The clips were kinda erratic, but I also kinda dug it and figured that 49 second bursts wasn’t too intense, so I made it a weekly thing.
When I watch them back I can spot little arcs of things that were going on in my life:
My routine of ending up in Catty on a weekend, friends getting married, how little my band actually rehearses, brief awkward spells of dating, the ridiculous amount of commutes I was doing between being evicted from my flat and the 3 months of couch surfing while I tried (and failed) to find somewhere else to live… all the while documenting the adventures I was on with Jazz as our relationship progressed and took off, and everything that came along after it.
I didn’t particularly concern myself about an audience or even think about who might be watching it, so it was kinda mad to receive a call from Paul Banks saying he’d been watching my videos and wondered how I’d feel about using the stuff that mostly focused on Jazz and myself being put together for a music video, if I had all the footage still.
I was way too interested and curious about how it would look myself so just agreed on the spot without really considering how mental it would be essentially putting my own memories into a whole new context for the public to view. Funnily enough, it ended up being pretty challenging.
A few things were established early on, like using slightly lengthier clips to not mentally exhaust viewers for one, and other shit like changing up the aspect ratio and I guess other boring technicalities which I’m sure isn’t interesting to most people so I will stop.
To be honest I’m real fucking proud of this, and the song is stuck in my head right now so I hope you dig that to. It was cool to be able to work on this for the couple of weeks I had to turn it around, and aside from a couple of last minute alterations that needed to be made in order to keep it PG, the whole process was seamless.
So yeah, Victoria is a single from Shed Seven‘s latest album Instant Pleasures and the music video is littered with my ugly mug. Do enjoy.
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