Here’s my favourites

You can see some more favourites here

I first met Fabe at Victoria station on the 5th of April 2007, at 7pm. I’m able to pin point the exact moment I met him, because, through the power of social networking, the moment is now forever documented on dontstayin.com via this photo:

We were both attending a “Flash Mob”, my first one in fact, and shortly after the countdown at 7pm, through all the madness that is a flash mob, Fabe appeared out of the sea of people, snapped that picture of me, shouted “Fisheye everything!” and then disappeared into the masses again. I was later introduced to him formally once the crowds started to dissipate.

From there, many conversations were had with Fabe on-line in the then thriving dontstayin.com community, and then on MSN as our friendship grew. From a dontstayin.com point of view, Fabe gave me the single most significant piece of advice one day while we were frolicking about in Victoria park for a dontstayin meetup: “Change your DSI name from Shotgun to your real name, promoters are likely to take your more seriously.”  He was right. I took this picture of Fabe and Wo0 that day, he pretty much talked me through the process of taking it… it was another new technique he’d taught me.

I’ve always been the sort of person that doesn’t like to be taught, I prefer to tinker and work it out for myself. In fact I get quite grumpy at someone who tries to tell me how to achieve something. But there was something about the way Fabe could transfer his knowledge of a new technique, looking back I guess he was just able to plant the ideas and leave you to work the rest out yourself. I bet he would have made a great school teacher in a different life.

But it was Fabe’s style of night street photography that’s influenced me the most. In 2008/09 I found myself regularly being impressed with each of his new galleries. Both the camera technique and processing was something I wanted to emulate. I now look at a lot of what I produce and can see a little bit of Fabe’s influence in every photo I take, in many cases it’s my own styles and techniques that I’ve discovered by accident while trying to achieve something else that I’d seen in something by Fabe, so in reality my photos don’t actually look like his, but I know the journey I took to find my style, and how important Fabe’s photography was throughout that.

Shortly after Fabe’s death, Wo0 and I decided we wanted to head out into the streets of London, to areas where Fabe used to shoot. We spent an evening just simply remembering him, the sort of photos he would take and the things he’d said to us over the years. This is likely to be the first of a few sessions like this, and maybe at the end of it, we’ll have a collection of some images that we could try and raise some charity money with. There’s no solid plan yet, but it was great to just get out there and remember the great man. Here’s a few of my favourites from the evening:

RIP Fabe x

It’s my birthday on the 26th if anyone’s wondering why I’m not doing Too Damn Glam on the 25th!

I love the way, with a bit of cleaver timing, I’ve managed to capture what looks like emotion from them…

I’d had the idea for this shoot in my head for some time, and finally everything fell into place; we had the spare time, and the lighting was just about right too. I wanted it to have a 70′s feel to the shoot.

So here’s some very daring, and intimate pictures of Louise. The bare-bottom one got removed from Facebook for being offensively pornographic. I’ll let you decide if that’s and accurate description, or whether the Facebook Police have no idea what art is.

My favourite Clubbing Shot of the year…. The second I took this, I knew it was gold.

I took this about 5 minutes after I turned 30, in my favourite place in the world and my favourite person in the world was there with me.

It’s not easy to make a geek look sexy, so we made someone who looks sexy wear some geek glasses instead.

I love everything about this shot, especially the lighting. But what I love most, is the effort Emma Springett and Louise Springett put into setting it all up for me.

The second Ashley stood in front of the backdrop in that outfit, I knew I was going to get a winner from this set.

It’s hard not to talk about this picture without mentioning boobs, so there, I mentioned them. I love the 60′s feel I got with this shoot.

This is my all time favourite shot of the year, and maybe even my all time favourite shot so far. It’s hard to explain how it makes me feel. The mist is steam coming off the ice on the floor, it disappeared as quickly as it appeared, and we just happened to be there, in Central Park, within the exact 1 minute window that this happened, with my camera in my hand!

I can’t explain why I love this so much, but I just really do!

I don’t do a lot of animal photography, mainly because I don’t really get much from looking at animal photographs. But this one really worked for me. It could have been taken anywhere in the world. It was actually taken in Bedford.

This is probably a total marmite photo. I love that it’s blurred, I love that it has reflections from the glass I took it through, and I love that it’s just a photo of a bridge.

This photo makes me feel like an excited kid just by looking at it.

This photo would be nothing without Gracie’s amazing clothes and styling. I’m just the lucky one who got to capture it in a photograph

This is evidence that you don’t have to be a model to make people’s jaws drop. I think this shoot got more positive feedback, comments, likes and views than any other studio shoot I’ve ever done, and all it was, was me asking a mate to come in for a play around in front of the camera!

I’ll let you into a little secret. This photo is an accident. It wasn’t supposed to look like this. But sometimes it’s all about knowing which ones to keep.

I travelled into London on a Sunday for the most recent meet up, and as a result had to get the wrong train in; my normal line was shut for engineering works. The train then also took a much longer route than normal, a route I’ve only gone a couple of times before. As the sun set, while sitting on the train, I managed to get some great photos of the odd sights I saw along the way.

Here’s a very small selection. I’ll be selling prints of these soon.

Some of the photos we got are jaw dropping. Here’s a selection of my favourites from the shoot:

My friend Amy Young is a perfect example of this. I’ve known her for about 2 years now, and I think the first time I spoke to her I said I wanted to photograph her. It took a long while to get round to doing it though, but I think you’ll agree, the wait was worth it. Here’s a selection of my favourites from the shoot: