Bartolomy’s Diary

First of all, here is the cover and a few tears of Angel Magazine just been out for a few days….been busy doing DIY therefore the delay

I met Sarah Lazenby in Muswell Hill to discuss a photo shoot, Nick Lockwood joined us later on for some more chats, it was good to see them again. They have finished recording their debut album and will have it mastered next week…..and have gigs lined up 4 weeks from now.

Another place I have never witnessed a gig at is the Electric Ballroom, a place with a lot of history, I have seen the place decked out with market stalls but that’s it. Cat the Dog ( Chris Mellian (vocals & guitar) Andy Newton (drums) Daryl Pruess (guitar) Dan Logan (Bass) ) were on at 8 and were supporting The Hold Steady. By the time they go on stage the place is only filled for 20% and this has an effect on the sound, which is pretty good but roomy, in my opinion it could have been turned up a notch. I shoot 4 songs (after which the security guy indicated ‘3 songs it’s over’, told ya these twits can’t count…..) and I shoot a few frames from the balcony in the back which just about works. I shot at 400 iso without flash and I managed to pull of some decent shots. Tonight they play at Koko supporting the Eagles Of Death Metal which should be a great show……….

During the Hold Steady’s show Jeremy ‘All is Forgiven’ Huffelman walks up to me and greets me with an hug, I am completely shocked, never expected him to be there. His band Invaders have finsihed recording their debut as well and are playing some gigs next month, will try and catch up.

I may shoot the ‘Tango’ themed shoot before that as it would involve a lot less hassle. Still the ‘P.A.’ shoot will be done but not until Oct. If I don’t get a suitable hotel for the shoot then I may try and fake it it through CGI, as a matter of fact I may add elements of it to the shots regardless.
I have been working on my new folio website which will look neat so to speak, the pix will be a lot bigger.

I could have been @ Reading but I declined. I watched some on TV yesterday, I fail to see the hype on Razorlight, the guy has got bad skin and it’s nothing special what he brings……..then again I am old compared to the punters who lap it all up…..

Cat The Dog aint playing till later next week, as I mentioned before Danny Logan (who plays with his fingers btw) is not around for a few days and as a three piece it was not working as they wanted it to be. I shall see and shoot them on Thursday and Friday……..I look forward doing that

Instead of all this I watched a few movies, I saw SherryBaby which was excellent (8/10), then after that I watched Reign Over Me , which was very good up to a point. The whole part of Saffron Burrows was not needed at all, it was typical Hollywood bullshit which should have been avoided and had the part not been created it would have been an awesome flick, but of course Adam Sandler has got to get the girl….blah blah blah.

Today I am picking up some doors with Daddy Potasnick and probably do some DIY during the weekend and on Monday we have some friends coming over, time to chill

The Stateless gallery has been upped it can be viewed here: STATELESS

So it rained, the missus was bored, I was bored of sitting behind two screens photo shopping and we decided to go for a wander around Southbank. We went shopping first as the missus wanted some new smart kit and that didn’t take long, we ended in Primark as I was looking for a summery jacket. I have never been inside Primark ever before and was shocked how busy it was, and understood why the second when I checked the labels. This is sweatshop heaven, a wintery coat for 9 quid, I mean this is something that should cost £ 29.00 and it would still be regarded as cheap.
We as a nation are in deep trouble, you can talk to me about eco friendly and fair trade till Kingdome come, but stores like this ought to be banned big time……..naturally I saw a smart black jacket for 30 quid and bought that.
Then another thing, the amount of face/head coverage women wear, hajibs, scarves and whatnot me thinks Burkhas was the only garment missing in the assemble……this type of stuff is definitely the new black if you ask me……..
Organized religion, no doubt the biggest cancer on society.
From the hell of Oxford St. straight to Embankment to walk over the bridge and hang about Royal Festival Hall. We checked out some of the sculptures and water display (which drew a lot of participants, so mission accomplished from an interactive point of view) and then went inside for a snack and a coffee (expensive) and then decided to check out the World Press Photo 2007 gallery. Well I must say I was stunned by the quality of the imagery that hung there. Some of the nature shots were breathtaking, the free diving shot shut me up for a whole ten mins making me wish I had done that, of course the Palestinian conflict was there (like every year me reckons) and there was also a great shot of a murder scene from Guatemala which reminded me of a mafia slaying pic I saw in Life Mag. about 15 years ago (both are shot straight from above). All in all some extraordinary pix. But why have it crammed in such a small place, it was at some times way too claustrophobic to view some of the pix. Right next to it was a huge empty space completely unused…….
From there we just wandered about, I caught a few snoggers, nothing too major as it was raining in stages so we went to the Founders pub near the Tate Modern for a few, and saw the waiters and kitchen staff muck about with the food that made us sure not to order any….
We saw that Dali is being exhibited for 2 more weeks @ Tate Modern and we’ll try and catch that hopefully next weekend.

Damn the weather is just rubbish here, al I hear are stories from my m8es who say how hot it is down south in Spain and Greece, yet here it is pissing down every few days. The amount of days that I could actually sit outside are nothing compared to last year. What a sjeeete summer.
I have been working mostly on the Total Spec shoot which I hope to finish today, then I will also make some galleries for Stateless and Flowers. There are also still galleries to be done for Brian Haw and The-Kiss. I am thinking of doing the-kiss in b&w, don’t ask why but it’s just one of those gut feelings which makes me think that the whole series would benefit from this somehow.

I just got a message that Cat The Dog are playing Shepherds Bush Empire with a stand in, Danny Logan apperently can not play that date and management wont allow photography. So I may go up to Hertford and shoot the Mexicolas instead, then again I may be slaving it@ home doing DIY instead, we’ll know by Friday
Meanwhile here are a couple of flowers from a session I did in early June, but I did not get the film back until earlier this week.
I will scan a few more in in due course, I am still playing with the pix for Total Spec Magazine.

I was playing about in photoshop when Maria called me to say that a lot of police had arrived in Parliament Square and were ready to move in on Brian Haw and the people that were giving him support and especially their tents.

I had not been there in quite some time and saw that Brian had grown a beard. One of the reasons I did not go there was that it had become more of a collective and not just Brian, the collective is called peace strike. I more or less lost my appetite in just shooting Brian because of that situation and also not much was going on besides them taking the police to court over the action of May 23rd 2006 when they came in the middle of the night and took the large majority of Brian’s display. This display is nowhere to be found so they say, and the judges are not really helping Brian & co.
At the same time they don’t put a price tag on the display so this matter is sort of stuck in a rut…..imagine how much paint and canvas you can buy with that money…….normally it would have been declared a load of rubbish but as there were two Banksy’s in that ‘collection’ it ups the price significantly, but Barbara Tucker told me that it was not about the money, yeah well justice you won’t get is what I am thinking coz that conspiring lot won’t give in…….you are fighting against the powers that be; judges, the govt. etc. They are all lawyers and will bend the law as they see fit.
The tents, well I always thought that it was another ‘test’ to see how it would play out and that a confrontation was on the books no doubt, don’t forget Brian stayed there without a tent for more than 5 years, only question is when……well today was the day….
In the end the authorities were civil, they sent a few lawyers ahead and Brian just argued with them and of course they would walk away, then some peeps wearing reflective coats would come in and try and dismantle the tents and Brian shouted at them to leave their personal property alone and he would try and prevent them doing anything, after that the police moved in and ejected them from the massive cage that was built around Parliament Square, I thought it was well civil, of course the coppers and the GLA know that the cameras were aimed at them so they had to tread carefully.
Brian called them ‘Nazis’ quite a few times, something I disagree with. Had they been Nazis it would have been a lot more violent and they would have sent to a camp left to rot in no time…. He then had a go at the guys in the reflective jackets carrying the tents away telling them they would burn in hell, right………….
For those that do not know; Brian, Barbara and Maria and probably a few others are Christians. They do not wear it on their sleeves but sometimes it does come out.
All in all the authorities were well civil in handling this affair.
I also had a feeling that certain moments were ‘played out’ in front of the camera, more dramatic so to speak of course I may be wrong but an event I witnessed last year on May 12th gave me the same impression.

I have just found out that GLA has given them their tents back and that they are allowed to stay on a small pitch behind Brian’s display. here are three shots, I think they came out alright….

I saw a few films these past days, Fracture in which Antony Hopkins plays a baddie, it’s a courtroom drama and not a bad flick to watch, then I saw Blades Of Glory with Will ferrel which had some very funny moments but the better one was The Bourne Ultimatum a pacy action flick which completed a very good trilogy indeed, well worth watching. Then I also watched 13 eps of a Swedish crime series called Wallander which had its good moments, kind of strange looking at this Swedish landscape in the series, so vast and yet so empty….quite the opposite from London….
I have put up a gallery of shots of Cat The Dog it can be seen here: CAT THE DOG.

Today more photoshopping on the “In the Company of Darkness” shoot which should be finished off later on, if so I will add them here.
I will also put of a Stateless gallery page.

Besides running around organizing a shoot for this weekend which probably won’t happen unless a miracle takes place and photoshop on the “In The Company Of Darkness” shoot for Total Spec Magazine I went to see Cat The Dog @ ULU, a venue I had not been to before. Not a bad place so to speak. I meet the band around 6 pm while Sparta, who is the headliner, do their soundcheck. We hang outside as the dressing room is an oven, it’s disgustingly hot in there, even the small dodgy fridge can’t even cool the beer to an acceptable temperature. Putting beers in a sink filled with water yields a better result.
Outside I take a few shots here and there and also follow them about just before they go on stage. Their gig kicks off at 8:40 and it has a very nice sound and lights, during the third song a jobsworth from Headline Security comes to me and tells me I can’t use flash and that it is only three songs. So I turn my flash of and I attempt to take some without it and he comes back to me and tells me to stop, I ask why and he says it’s the 4th track, to which I tell him that he can’t fucking count as it is the third , the guy is being a cunt and an argument follows and normally I can’t be fucked to deal with thick plebs like that but this was utter bullshit. I mean this is not rocket science is it, yet he even fucks that up……MORON!!!!!!
Meanwhile punters stand there and blitz their camera phones and compact digital cameras like there is no tomorrow, does he do anything about that, off course he doesn’t……….
I hang in the back and watch the gig with Terri and disappear upstairs for a minute as well and take a couple of quick shots from the balcony. The gig itself was their best I have seen sofar, it simply rocked.
Next week they are playing Shepherds Bush Empire, also known for very strict security, can’t fucking wait to deal with that lot

Some shots:

I was supposed to go to the Reading Festival but that’s not happening as I have not recieved any guarantees regarding the main stage and knowing from previous experiences I do not favor making the trek and being fannied about by a bunch of PR’s, I’ll do some DIY instead unless something better comes up

I have never taken so long to do a shoot as I did yesterday, a total of 12 hours was spent inside a studio in Islington to shoot 8 pages for Total Spec Magazine, but it was well worth it. Those that know me and my workings know I would be done by 5, instead it became 9pm. Granted we started fairly late (half 12) due to the fact that Claire Salter’s (make-up) car broke down on the M1 which delayed things a tad, but she made well up for it creating a devilish great make-up. I also worked with a new hair stylist Jane Hodson who did an excellent job as well
Every shot needed its own way of lighting and despite the lack of space it worked out well. Still there is a fair amount of photo shopping to be done, so it will be a few days until I post some results.
Rebekah Roy did some serious styling on this one, some great kit to work with. Besides that we spent a lot of time wrapping things up in bin bags (60 in total) such as cases, chair, step ladder and a frame. I think it worked out well and it will look well edgy, you’ll see.

Here are a few shots from my Ava session from last Friday, you would not say that this was shot in a communal garden in Notting Hill Gate.
the first one will be used for an article in September’s issue of Notion mag.

I get up early to meet Michael Czerwinski near Old St. as he is giving me the keys to his workshop which I can use tomorrow for a shoot for Total Spec. magazine, I am doing this with Rebekah Roy, the 5th stylist who i have approached for doing this ‘job, I am actually amazed it has come off the ground…..still I would like to see the pix in the bag to believe it….

I then went back home to finish of the pix for Angel magazine, the shoot from last Tuesday. The deadline was tight but there was no rocket science required photoshop wise and besides some filtering not a lot has been done to the pix.
here are a few. I may even get a cover, wahey even more than I could bargain for.
Styling: Lisa Nicolaou
Hair and make-up: Charlotte Fisher
Model: Karmyn Thomas @ Bookings

Straight after that on the bus down to Tower Bridge to pick up my lights @ The Design Museum and then take a cab and drop them of at tomorrow’s location, real fun to haul a heavy case up 6 flights of stairs…..
Then it was of to Notting Hill Gate where I was shooting Ava for Notion Magazine, Ava is a reggae artist signed to Virgin records.
I did not know until later that there would be more people involved in making the images, now sometimes this can go horribly wrong and that can be due to all kinds of reasons, one of them is ego.
I meet Dan Sanders who isn’t used to be bossed around as she simply bosses others around, I can understand that, there are a lot of indecisive f00kers around and photo shoots need to be done in a short period of time, which I am used to but I have heard horror stories of loads of other shooters who take ages to come to a decision/result. However I have to stand my ground a few times regarding shots/mood, and it is all done in a humorous way and it did work out for the better, Ava herself was laughing her socks of as she thought it was hilarious that I stood up to Danni.
It could have gone the other way completely had there been a personality clash which wouldn’t be the first time. In the end I had fun in the few hours that I was there, some decent shots for sure.

After that I rushed back to Angel where I met Mark Kebble of Angel Magazine, where we downed various pints sitting outside in the sun talking about last Tuesday’s shoot and other bits and bobs…. I sit there for about 2 hours when I have to make my way to Camden’s Proud Gallery where Cat the Dog : Chris Mellian (vocals & guitar) Andy Newton (drums) Daryl Pruess (guitar) and Dan Logan (Bass) are playing. The Proud Gallery is a great place to hang, it has a massive roof terrace where everyone hangs out, there is talk that the place gets bulldozed for another mall, like we need another Starbucks…..
I have a brief chat with them before the show and shot them only during the show. There wasn’t really any time or opportunity to shoot a band shot there, as I wanted to do a “wet one” after the show. The band played tight, and sounded a lot better at the Proud Gallery than they did @ Leeds’ Cockpit.
Some shots

Today just basically going through hundreds of pix

For the past three days been busy organising stuff for this Sunday’s shoot (Total Spec mag.) and next weekend’s shoot.
Sorted several locations, spent time souricng a cool sniper rifle (oh boy and cool it is ) and a gun (all replica’s, but you can’t tell the difference unless you wish to break them apart which you can’t).
Still working on models for the Americana shoot………

Today I am of to the design museum to pick my lights up as I need them this Sunday and then it is of to Notting Hell to shoot Ava, a reggea artist signed to Virgin rec. for Notion mag. Then I am of to meet Mark Kebble and drop the pix of of last Tuesday’s shoot and then it is of to Camden’s Proud Galleries and meet and shoot cat the Dog.

Here is a shot I overlooked earlier of Blood Red Shoes taken at Lovebox

Yesterday I was shooting all day at the Brunswick Center for the September issue of Angel magazine, it was a good day, worked with a great girl, Karmyn from Bookings Models, and everything came together nicely. It was also fun to work with Lisa Nicolaou again, been at least 2 years since we last worked. Good to work with a stylist who isn’t up her own arse……

It is a blazing hot day and young London is out in full force; the ladies are scantily dressed and the blokes’ eyeballs are popping out…….

Stateless (Chris James-vocals, keyboards,and guitars, Kidkanevil-turntables, sampling and programming, Justin Percival-bass and vocals, David Levin-drums and Rod Buchanan Dunlop -FX, programming and keyboards) are playing an acoustic set upstairs in the Camden Lock Tavern and things start of badly as Chris James has lost his voice on the drive down and Justin Percival has been “promoted” from backing to full on vocals on two songs, the rest is being played instrumental. Chris Joins the rest to play guitar for a couple as well.
It is an intimate affair as there are 20 odd peeps watching them and it kinda feels like a living room style party. I also hear and see things that I had not witnessed before, especially Kidkanevil’s wizardry who normally is in the back onstage and set up on a table, so it is very hard to see what he normally does, yet this time he is bunked on a sofa and it is all the more impressive. Justin’s vocals are impressive too, I am glad I went to witness this.
The new song is played again (I heard it first @ the album launch) in an instrumental version, and this song is killer.

I shot the band real quick before the show against a wall, not the most creative then again there was little time and very few ideal spots to shoot them… David Levin took charge of posing duties and after swapping sunglasses got the whole band to redo the shot
I will post the bandshot in a few days, need to plaiiiiiiiiii a lil’

STATELESS @ CAMDEN LOCK TAVERN

About time too…..then again I have heard it will start pissing down again tomorrow and/or Tuesday….
Here are 4 more close-ups of Cat The Dog .

I got on the train yesterday afternoon to go to Leeds to shoot Cat The Dog (Chris-Vocals, Andy-drums, Daryl-bass and Daniel-guitar) for Notion Magazine. I ended up travelling 6/7 hours for a 2.5 hrs stay. I remember the Cockpit from the tour I did with Apartment (David Caggiari & Co.) last year.
I meet Vic their tour mgr. who intros me to the band (straight from a Nando’s dinner….) and I take them across the road to do a shot and after that use some railway arches…it is all dead easy, in 15 mins the whole thing is done.
I hang with them a bit and shoot a few just before they go on and snag three songs live before making my way back to the train station which luckily is just a 2 mins walk away…..amazing how time flies by……
I sleep for a while on the way back and wake up to a cigarette stench as some dickhead has been smoking inside the carriage…I wonder whether there are smoke detectors inside trains, and if not why not??????

Some pleasing results, still playing with them of course. I will work on them today and tomorrow morning.
Tomorrow Stateless are playing an afternoon show. I tried to meet up with drummer David Levin while in Leeds but time just did not permit this.
I will try and see Cat The Dog at Proud Gallery on the 10th……

Have meetings all morning @ The Brunswick center, possible models for a shoot and also a chat at Notion Mag. for a possible shoot later on…..
Meanwhile here are the two couples snogging @ Lovebox.

Meanwhile a court date has been set for the Apartment (David Caggiari & Co.) copyright infringement case against Kuba Music @ the end of this month.