My new photo project, FiftyTwo Teapots, launched today with it’s first photo. Tune in to 52teapots.co.uk every Thursday throughout the year to see the project progress.

I’m pleased to announce my new big personal project for 2012 – 52 Teapots. Every Thursday throughout 2012 I will be producing a new still life photo based around interesting teapots, with the first one landing later this week on January 5th. You can see all the photos as the project progresses on www.52teapots.co.uk

I love shooting bands. When I was younger I thought that I wanted a job that was in the music industry, however I’ve since then come to realise that what I actually want to do is be creative. Luckily I get to work with the music industry from time to time and be creative. Over the last few months I’ve been working a fair bit in Liverpool with music magazine Bido Lito! shooting portraits of bands and musicians. It’s been great to be able to get involved, albeit in a relatively small way, in the interesting and dynamic music scene there and I suspect that we’ll be seeing more Merseyside bands making it into the national consciousness over the next few years.

The Loud

Back in the summer I shot The Loud the cover and lead feature for issue 14. I’ve got quite a long history with the band, having known them for 3 or 4 years now and it’s always a pleasure shooting them. Life becomes much easier when you’ve got an established relationship with your subject(s). You’ve already done the hard work to build up a rapport from scratch and (assuming you did a good job last time) there’s already trust between the two parties.

The brief for this session was to shoot a cover photo of all 3 of the lads and then 3 individual portraits for the article, all featuring strong coloured light that took cues from the artwork of their latest release, Harris Shutter. For those that want a bit more of the technical side of things, the cover photo was lit with 3 umbrellas, each with a gel over their reflectors. The individual portraits were shot with a gelled and gridded reflector 45° behind on either side, a gelled and snooted flash at the backdrop and a bare bulb flash camera left to shine a bit of light onto their faces. You can see more photos from the session on the Bido Lito! website.

Lucky Beaches

I was back in the same studio a couple of months later to shoot Lucky Beaches for the cover and lead feature of Bido Lito! 17. This time it was much less dark and moody affair with the lighting, which was entirely appropriate as he writes upbeat, Beck-esque indie pop songs. Unlike The Loud, I’d never met Lucky Beaches (AKA Luke Muscatelli) but luckily Luke’s an easy going guy and we hit it off well.

I’d gone into the shoot with a particular idea in mind, however it quickly became apparent that it wasn’t going to work with Luke, so I scrapped that idea and moved on. There’s no point in proceeding with something that may be a great photo technically but totally out of context and character. On the topic of the technical, the portraits are all shot with lots of soft key light and hard, colour temperature shifted rim light.

In Binary Cell studios, where this shoot took place, there’s a big green screen set up behind the photo cycs, so as I was snapping away I noticed that the light from the green screen lights combined beautifully with that of the modeling lights from my flashes. A quick change of lens later and we ended up shooting a good percentage of the photos with the continuous light. Once again, you can see more images from the shoot on the Bido Lito! website.

Lucky Beaches on the cover of Bido Lito! issue 17

Finally, I was back over in Merseyside shooting the band Loka for a feature. As it turned out, this was one of the fastest shoots I’ve ever done (excluding Sheffield 365 Project, where I was taking portraits on the street). We had a pretty clear picture of what we wanted to achieve with the shoot, and I got what I needed from Mark & Tom straight away. I’ll be the first to admit that it wasn’t exactly a complex set up, with the Loka guys stood in front of a white wall that I obliterated with a pair of studio flashes, but it’s always nice to know that you can pull a shoot off quickly, especially when your subjects aren’t totally confident in front of the camera. That all said, we still spent around an hour together, it’s just that for the other 55 minutes we were talking about music, life and all sorts. All that remained was to do a bit pf photoshop magic with some abstract images I’d shot earlier in the day and the portrait was good to go.

Until next time…

Loka

St. Paul, MN

Banks of the Mississippi

Chicago

The Ozarks

Highways in Houston

One massive vegetable garden

Sunset on BC Ferries

The Rocky Mountains

Kootenay National Park

West coast rain forest

Revelstoke Dam

You can see full sets of photos on Flickr: Canada and the USA

Take a look around and let me know what you think.

www.luke-avery.com

It’s been a while since my last blog post. Sorry. I’ve been busy with a variety of things both work and personal. I’ve got a few proper posts planned, but for the time being, here are some individual photos/outtakes/b-sides etc… for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy and check back soon for more posts.

For the last 4 years, Liverpool has hosted a big music festival and conference called Liverpool Sound City and for 3 days I called it home. I was, along with a handful of other photographers, covering Sound City for the conference magazine – a special daily edition of Liverpool’s music magazine Bido Lito!. The plan was to go out and cover as many gigs as possible and then rush back to the production office in order to get the magazine to the printers by 2am. Hectic but good fun is how I’d describe it.

So on Thursday morning I hopped on the train over to Liverpool, found my way to the Hilton to pick up my credentials and then prepared myself for what lay ahead.

Jazz Hands @ Screenadelica

Day One

Day one began, as did all the days with a production meeting of the whole Bido Lito! team, basically to make sure everyone knew what they were covering and that all the key gigs had both a photographer and writer at them. Fortunately evryone got something of a say in what they covered and my schedule left a little bit of time for random band discovery, which I think is a fairly key part of any festival.

I spent most of Day 1 in the Cathedral Crypt covering the bands there in the run up to Frank Turner, before hightailing it over to Masque to catch Dinosaur Pile-Up. First up at the Cathedral Crypt were Canadian electro duo Handsome Furs, who seemed a pretty odd booking for that evening, since the rest of the line-up were accoustic soloists, but nevertheless they played a solid set and went down well, despite some serious monitor issues. Accoustic guitar slinging Ben Marwood followed and from the small group who sang along with every one of his songs, he brought a few fans with him. Eccentric highlight of the evening had to go to Franz Nicolay who opened his set with “I used to play the banjo, but the banjo is dead so this will be my first all accordian show” and he did indeed play his entire set with just his accordian. I can’t actually remember any of his songs but his accordian, waxed moustache and general good humour have stuck in my memory.

Rounding up my time at the Cathedral Crypt was punk-frontman-turned-accoustic-guitar/singer Frank Turner. It was pretty obvious that he was who most of the crowd had come to see, and he was excellent. Even though it was just one man and a guitar on stage the whole time, he held the crowd in the palm of his hand (metaphorically speaking), with everyone singing along to the choruses and the like. Unfortunately I had to cut my time there a bit short and head back to the main heart of the Sound City gigs to catch Dinosaur Pile-Up at Masque.

I’ve got a bit of a soft spot for grunge, it was the first music I discovered independantly when growing up (I lived on the west coast of Canada and listened to radio broadcast from Seattle during the early & mid 90′s), so I was always going to enjoy the heavily grunge influenced Dinosaur Pile-Up and they didn’t disappoint. It was also a pleasant change to get a bit more variety in the lighting than the 4 static blue lights that I’d had for the preceeding 4 bands of the evening. Unfortunately I once again had to cut my band viewing short, although this time it wasn’t to go see another band but to get my day’s photos uploaded in the production office and into the magazine.

Handsome Furs @ The Cathedral Crypt

Frank Turner @ The Cathedral Crypt

Dinosaur Pile-Up @ Masque

Day Two

Even though I wasn’t specifically assigned to cover any of the conference sessions, I decided to go along to one or two, since it’s often interesting to get an insight into another creative industry. I went to one panel session about Music and the Media, which actually prooved to be fascinating and actually had a lot of general crossover into the world of photography. There is actually a vast amount of similarities between and up and coming photographer and an unsigned band. We both have to fight the be seen/heard in a massively saturated market. We both are trying to get the attention of outlets for our work (magazines/radio). We both could often do with the guidance of an agent/manager. I suppose those similarities shouldn’t be a surpise, I just hadn’t thought about it before.

Sound City Conference

The evening saw me jumping between Sceenadelica and Masque to cover a range of bands. I started out with surf band El Toro! at Masque before heading down Seel St to catch Gaswegian band Cuddly Shark at Screenadelica. That venue turned out to be my favourite of the whole festival, not for shooting in as it was pretty sparse, but the vibe of the place was amazing. It was part stripped back (and very loud) gig venue and part screen print exhibition. I have a massive weakness for screen printed posters. There’s something about the physical, tactile nature along with the tiny imperfections and great illustration that makes me love it. So combine that with some interesting bands and you’ve got me hooked.

My time in Screenadelica was short lived, as I had to dash back to Masque to shoot photos of The Loud, who I’ve known for quite some time now, and whilst it wasn’t their best show, it had it’s moments. Austrailian thrash duo DZ Deathrays were next, and they were one of those bands that you’re not sure how they physically make it through their set due to the sheer level of energy put into every song. Unfortunately for my penultimate band of the night, Cults, following DZ Deathrays (ableit in a different venue and I was probably the only one who saw the 2 back to back) made their slow melodic indie pop quite a change to watch. They were alright, just a little bland for my tastes. The energy was ramped back up though for the headliners Black Lips. Sweaty and rawcus doesn’t quite do it justice. It was intense and the crowd loved it.

DZ Deathrays @ Screenadelica

Black Lips @ Masque

Screenadelica

Day Three

With no magazine to produce in the evening on day 3, it was always going to be a bit of a party night, but with no conference in the moring either, it also got to be a little bit of a sleep in morning. I spent a little time at the Australian BBQ in the afternoon, although by the time I arrived the food had all gone, but there was still a good atmosphere going on. A little tiny cinema in a bar was my next port of call to watch the debut showing of the new video by The Loud and an accoustic performance by the band, before heading across town to the O2 Academy.

Due to high winds being predicted (and turning up) that evening, a show in the Bombed Out Church was pulled and it’s bands had to be re-jigged around the other venues. The end result of which was that the first 2 bands (LaFaro and The Computers)playing at the Academy 1 had been bumped from the headline slots in Academy 2 and unfortunately played to a virtually empty room. It was a shame as they were both really good. Kitten were the next band on and had a completely wild lead signer, who danced/headbanged/spasmed her way through their set. Great for photos, if a little hard to catch up with at times. Finally at the Academy for me were Lower Than Atlantis who put in a polished show, although I did feel like the only person at the gig who was out of their teens.

One of the great things about mordern technology is the way that people can connect with others, and a random recommendation to me from someone on Twitter (shameless self promotion – follow me at @lukeaveryphoto) lead me back to Screenadelica for TRIPLE drummer plus bass and sax band JazzHands. I know having 3 drummers sounds like a recipie for disaster, but they were actually fantastic. Inreadibly tight, full of energy and humour – a fantastic live band, especially in such an intimate venue, although it was so loud that my earplugs bled.

The end was in sight by this point, and I headed through the torrential rain to Static Gallery to photograph Hot Club De Paris and Mugstar. Mugstar were a real challenge to shoot due to the fact the the entire lighting for their set came from a digital projector which output patterns and such across the stage. It looked great in real life but was a nightmare to get a sharp shot in. Finally I set back out through the rain for my very last assignment of the festival, which was F*cked Up playing at the Kazimier. Due to getting somewhat lost on the way to the venue which I’d never been to before and with previously mentioned amazing modern technology out of battery power, the gig had already started when I arrived. For those that don’t know about F*cked Up, they have a reputation for being a stunning live band and they did not dissapoint. Pink Eyes the man mountain of a singer travelled ALL around the (relatively small) venue – right across the floor, up into the balcony, all over. It was pretty physically demanding to get the photos as well, since I ended up in the middle of the moshpit, but hey, you’ve got to go where the action is.

So that was that. Photos done. Off to the official afterparty for a couple of drinks and the conclusion of my rock and roll weekend.

F*cked Up @ The Kazimier

LaFaro @ O2 Academy

JazzHands @ Screenadelica

Mugstar @ Static Gallery

Sorry about the length of this post – there was a lot to fit in. If you’re still going and want to see more photos from the 3 days, head over to Flickr: http://flic.kr/s/aHsjuDXyHc

I thought I’d share some photos from a new personal project I’m working on. In case you didn’t guess from the photo above, it’s on allotment doors.

The inspiration for the project came about last year while wandering around an allotment whilst I was looking for subjects for my Sheffield 365 Project. I found it fascinating that people were putting proper “inside doors” on their allotments, almost as if they were guarding the entrance to a secret kingdom. Albeit a secret kingdom of vegetables, weeds and greenhouses, but sometimes it’s fun to let the child in you do the imagining.

There’s some more photos after the jump.

Set on Flickr

I realise it’s been a while since I last posted an entry to this here blog (must try harder), but I’ve got some exciting news for you all. I’ve got my first solo photo exhibition coming up very soon.

From 5-31 May at The Workstation all 365 photos from my Sheffield 365 Project will be shown. For those who haven’t seen that project, I spent the entirety of last year shooting a street portrait a day of the people of Sheffield throughout the city. We’re also holding a launch do on 4 May from 6-9pm, which is open and free to all and sundry who would like to come along.

Have a look at www.sheffield365project.co.uk for more information

A few months back I came into the possession of a box of old valves – legally, don’t worry about that – and I’ve been meaning to shoot some photos of them since. I think they’re absolutely fascinating things, almost certainly the most beautiful bits of electronics. Little technological ships in bottles.

They had been left in a house that an acquaintance had bought and I happened to be there at the right time to rescue them from almost certain doom in the rubbish bin. As far as I can tell most of the valves date from the 50’s & 60’s and were made in England. I’ve got no idea if they work or not, as I have no way of testing them. Although that said, even if I did have a way of testing, I don’t have anything that requires valves to run! I’m just happy having some beautiful old objects.

On the couple of occasions I’ve dabbled with electronics I’ve not had much success. In my late childhood I (with a couple of friends) used to spend hours taking apart old 70’s and 80’s electronics with a view to salvaging the components and making something interesting with them later on. Suffice to say I never once managed to make anything work, although on the plus side I don’t think I ever burned myself on solder either.

Anyway, since this is a photography blog, I suppose I better discuss the photography… I shot all the photos on a white seamless with a single medium softbox as the light. A couple of sheets of black foamcore came in handy to create the dark edges to glass which give them definition and shape. The rest was creating layouts that were pleasing and gave the desired results. I wish that I could have hooked up the working valves to a circuit, as they give off an amazing warm orange glow when they’re shifting those electrons around. Another task for another day I guess.

I suppose what it all boils down to is that sometimes you get lucky and stumble across a treasure trove of the past worth keeping. When those opportunities present themselves, you’ve got to take them. And you never know, you might end up with a lovely handmade valve amplifier as a result.

If anyone reading this does know how to test the valves to see if they’re working (especially if it’s something easy like using a multimeter) then please leave a comment, I’d much appreciate it. To see more photos of these mini glass and metal wonders, click here.