Ok I know, it’s been over a week since I posted! Sorry. I’m crap. I’ll try to do better..
It’s been an action-packed week though. Evelyne went to Montreal on Tuesday morning to sort out her resident visa (and she never missed the flight!) and I’ve been Mr Busy ever since trying to make the most of the time and getting lots of stuff done while she’s away. On top of that I’ve been out every night working shooting bands, DJing at Hard Rock Cafe and on Wednesday running my stall at a school fashion show! Very rock n roll I know but it went well and hopefully all those rich parents will be employing my talents to capture their lovely little terrors for all to see. Here’s hoping.
This week also saw 2 confirmations for wedding shoots, one being only 2 weeks away on April 1st, and no it’s not an April Fool’s prank. I hope!
The couple we visited last week and showed the canvas and slideshow came back and confirmed for May 27th and then the very next day we got another confirmation. So game on! I’m looking forward to shooting both and have been getting inspired by my Jerry Ghionis dvd. That man must be making a mint from his wedding photography but he does get some fantastic images. It just makes me determined to raise my game. I said to Tony that if I can capture images half as good as Jerry Ghionis’s I’ll be better than almost every wedding photographer in the Midlands. I like to have something to aim at.
Also this week, the samples arrived from Queensberry, the New Zealand company who will be making our wedding albums. The quality of their products is absolutely superb and I was raving about the samples in the pub Friday night when I suddenly stopped and realised I was getting excited about wedding albums! lol.. Again, very rock n roll!
Ok, so I have been a little bit cool this week I promise! On Tuesday I met up with Mastodon in Nottingham and spent an hour with them while they reviewed the singles for the next issue of Rock Sound. Starting with the new Funeral For a Friend single “Into Oblivion”, the band hated pretty much everything really but were very entertaining in their answers. They did however love the Nine Inch Nails single, but they’re favourite was, somewhat surprisingly, Arctic Monkeys. Bill even asked to keep the CD!
The show at Rock City that night was great again despite crappy sound and this time I got to photograph them.
Thursday night saw me photographing Deftones at the Academy but the lighting was awful so I never really got any killer shots, which is a shame cos they’re really photogenic and I’m a big fan of the band. I did get some quite cool crowd shots though which we might use as part of our Gig Junkies project..
Friday night I headed over to Moseley Skate Park for the opening of Fused Mag’s new exhibition. The place was nicely full of the usual suspects including some good friends and some I’d rather not have to make polite small talk with. Luckily I had a good excuse to leave and headed over to Wolverhampton to shoot Idlewild at the Wulfrun Hall. Idlewild are a band that I seem to be somewhat alone in liking. Well, amongst my friends anyway. Toni called them “middle of the road” which I don’t agree with at all and on Friday they again confirmed my belief in them with a superb gig including plenty of their faster heavier tracks, most of whch sound like classics to me. They should be headlining arenas with these tunes instead of bands like Kaiser Chiefs who I think are totally overrated.
From there I headed over to the Lost Lounge in Walsall where I’d been asked to photograph a club night by the owners. I was only going to stay an hour but ended up staying quite late surrounded by hundreds of chavs listening to the worst dance music in the world.. bassline house! 
It’s a great venue but I felt very out of place. Everyone was having fun though and I got loads of decent photos for the club to use. And I got paid nicely which is the main thing!
I have spoken to Evelyne a few times and it sounds like she’s enjoying catching up with her friends and family back in Quebec. Hopefully we won’t have any problems with the visa application and she’ll be home on the 28th. So I have ten days to get the house looking a bit tidier and I did promise to start getting the small bedroom ready for our July arrival. It’s only 4 months away now! Scary stuff.
It’s Mothers Day today but I didn’t have the time to get up to Chester to see my mom. I did call her though and everything seems ok with them. They’re staying in England for a while as the doctor needs to keep an eye on my dad while he’s on some new pills for his heart. He needs to give up the cigarettes but it’s never going to happen. It’s frustrating watching him slowly kill himself. He’ll probably prove us all wrong and live til 120 though knowing him!
Happy Mother’s Day Mom. Love ya loads!
