Bartolomy’s Diary

Took me a while, I have been changing some bits even as late as last night, but that’s it.

Styling: Gillian Hyland
Hair and Make-up: Rachel Young
Model: Ashleigh @ Profile

Last week I hung out and travelled about for 4 days with Die! Die! Die! who had just been on a successful European tour.
The first show I join them on takes us to Brighton, only having left the capital for about 30 minutes I get hit by a bad case of food poisoning and need to go for no. 2, only to be on the motorway and the rest of the crew not taking me serious enough to pull over, I end up marking my territory in the van, lucky for them there’s a service station just down the road when it is all happening. This of course gives the band plenty of ammo for the next few days, should have pulled over fellaz

The gig at Jam is ok, but there are barely any lights so not much fun to shoot actually. Nor do I feel well after all this food poisoning situation and am not sure whether I can go to Birmingham the next day, however a good night’s sleep makes me feel good to undertake the journey.
Has been a while since I have been there, I shoot the whole set from behind Michael, as I wanted to get some shots from behind but I end up being locked in for the whole set, much to sound man James Goldsmith and Tour Manager George Beleznay’s chagrin. I end up taking some cool pix tho, so it was well worth doing that.
London the next day is probably the best gig of all, there’s some proper crowd attendance 120 odd and the response is very good. They end the set with Will from Friendship on guitar and play Nirvana’s “Breed”, quite a laugh….
On all shows the band only play three songs from “Promises Promises”, nothing of their debut (which they did at Buffalo Bar tho) and the rest is of the yet untitled new album which should be released early next year. A single is expected to be released shortly before X-Mas.
I have had the privilege to hear the unmastered album, and I can tell you that it is killer, it blows “Promises Promises” away, it is more mature and an extra layer added on yet still very intense. The band had tightened up their live act as well while being away in the EU, the second they started playing in Brighton I thought they played a lot tighter than as they did in early Sept.
I am plastering a few pix down, I have decided to do a book on them which should be coming out @ some point next year, you’ll see.

In the evening Ron Arad, I checked his website beforehand, he does make great objects. When I had a chat with him while taking pictures he was being a joker.
His talk was presented with a chaotic flair……

I was given an hour notice to be told that Paul Smith was at three in the afternoon and not in the evening, so I jumped in the shower and cycled down only to arrive sweaty. Went straight into set up and shot ten frames and that was that. Only after watching his talk, which was excellent btw did I get a chance to assess things.
Must do that again, NOT.
In the end however I have a nice portrait, he wears his clothes effortless and with a certain nonchalance. I like the way the stripes react with my technique.

My missus and I have been to Crete these past two weeks, had some lovely weather, also some dramatic fat fluffy clouds too, I think I took some nice land/sea scape shots and a few of Cretan life.
Terri and I travelled to Tsoutseros the first week and were in Agios Nikolaos and surroundings the week after. Tsoutseros is a small town mainly for the Greeks in the close vicinity, hardly a foreigner sets foot there which is great in its own way, it is easily accessible from Heraklion and has a very nice beach.It was quiet, but after 5 days of doing nothing too quiet, we were not mobile as there was nothing around where we could rent some wheels, so we went for Agios Nikolaos, where it was quiet but still busy enough for everyone with a shop (and there is some serious designer stuff there and especially jewellery)to be open, in Tsoutseros you had 5 tavernas and 3 VERY EXPENSIVE shops and that is it for your local entertainment, but the season had more or less ended for them.
In Agios Nicolaos we got ourselves a scooter and drove around some nice mountainous areas, the scooter just about managed it, we met some great people who helped us get us on our way and advised us in finding some great restaurants. We end up at some point @ Seles where we see windmills 100 ft high, then those huge propellers swooshing around, eerie. Genius here only shoots a couple on his iphone……..tsk tsk. The winds had come up big time, something I had not experienced before;and this was our 5th visit to Crete. This meant also changeable weather, but in the end I guess we had 80 % of the time blazing sunshine.
Really a chilled affair, we spoke to locals who happily pointed us to some great places to eat that were off the beaten track, whatever you do never eat on the main boulevard and/or water front, the food is never as good and always pricier.
We experienced two kinds of Crete, the commercial “gimme your money hubbah hubbah” attitude, and the one where you are treated like friends, we were lucky we had more of the second one than of the first.
Special thanks go out to our friends in Heraklion,; Vangelis and Effie who helped us out of some situations

Here are some shots, with their descriptions: