The Darkness

Give me a D!

‘D!’

Give me an Arkness

‘Arkness!’

 

Yes, The Darkness are back and I wrangled a pit pass for this explosive show.

I wasn’t expecting it to be half as good as it turned out to be. It’s been nearly five years since they last released anything, so expectations of a ‘reunion tour’ scenario, y’know ‘take the money and run through a set’ was quite high. Turns out all Justin and co. want is to be loved. And that they were. I must admit, it’s not hard to love a grown man who prances about in new jumpsuits every few minutes, whilst belting through some stomper hits… before riding a security guard like a bronco. …you just don’t get enough of that at the Olympia.

Anyway, you can find the rest of the set on State.ie or over at my Facebook Page

Foster The People

I won’t bore you with some banal chat today. Not when I’ve belter pictures to be showing you from Foster The People’s headline gig at the Olympia from this week.

As always, click to see them larger over at Flickr.

What a week

Alas, it was not to be with the NME. I was beaten by the better picture, in the end – and rightly so, I feel. Truth be told, I was of course a little bit disappointed, but perhaps only because during the extended wait, I had convinced myself I had won it. You know, like when you buy a lottery ticket and just before the first ball comes out you think to yourself ‘I’m definitely going to buy a llama. Feck it, I’m getting three with this kind of money’. Unfortunately I will not be jetting off to the NME, nor indeed for that matter, setting up Finglas’ first llama sanctuary. Shame, really.

So that was my Monday. Well, I also had some e-mails setting up shoots for State.ie’s Faces of 2011 Spectacular.

Tuesday saw me shoot the marvelous Elaine Mai for State, up near Whelans in Dublin. With help from the fantabulous Abe Tarrush we got some sexy-mid-day-softbox-strobist action going. Here’s one from the shoot anyway:

There’ll be more on Elaine on State.ie very soon.

Wednesday saw me shoot the Dublin five-piece Alice Can’t Turn Left before their gig in Sweeneys, again with help from the Marvellous Mr.Tarrush I managed to pull off some great strobist ideas picked up from the truely amazing Todd Owyoung:

And then Thursday saw me entertain fiddle-phenomenon Daithi in the Phoenix Park, before he was swept off to Limerick for his show that evening. With no help for the shoot and the wind turning my softbox into a highly expensive kite towards the end of the shoot, I was lucky enough to be able to grab a few softbox-aided shots before the wind sent us packing. Oh, and I got a wave from the new president leaving the Aras in his new car n’all!

Today being Friday, I’m taking a well deserved ‘eating-my-body’s-weight-worth-of-cake’ break. Battenburg is my saturated-fat crumble of choice today. It goes down well with a pear cider, I find… I tell thee, the life of a Dublin-based rock photographer is glamourous to no end…

NME, Tubs, new site & more!

Since we’ve last spoken, or rather, since i’ve last had words with you (you mute dryshite, you) I’ve been selected from over 100,000 photographs to make the last 10 in the reportage category in the 2011 NME photography awards. It was great news for me. I couldn’t believe the e-mail when it came through, really. There’s the image above in all it’s monochrome glory on the lovely NME site. 

Turns out some people were interested in this development. So the Daily Mail got in contact about writing an article about the whole thing and RTE asked for a brief interview. And there I was, last Tuesday, talking to the Daily Mail reporters and Ryan Tubridy about the competition and the results coming out that night.

Sandwiched between Randy Rox and shite songs. Result!

‘Cept the results never came out on time…

They’re due before this weeks magazine hits the shelves, I’m told. Which is just as well. Me nerves are shot waiting to hear the news. I’ve been up every morning refreshing the NME page and checking it last thing before i go to bed. It’s a sad existence, really. But you couldn’t imagine what it’d mean to me. To go to NME and talk to their photographers would be good enough, let alone the Nikon camera that comes as a prize! It’d be phenomenal. In the space of three years to go from a student nurse to a photographer recognised by the NME is just amazing. But I don’t want it to end just there. Nah, I want to go to the top, baby!

Anyway, I’m presuming the results were delayed due to legendary, hero man Danny North leaving the NME to shoot for Q, Kerrang and more with a different media group. So hopefully they get an equally impressive photographer to fill his boots in meeting the winners!

So there y’are.

Well, that’s not all that happened, actually. I was also chosen to have a photograph exhibited at the Ulster Hall, during Belfast Music Week, got selected to photograph new upcoming talent for TV and chosen as one of 12 Irish photographers to exhibit at the HWCH festival. Oh and I’ve updated the website. It’s still www.deadl.ie, cept it’s proper fancy now. And it should run nicely on ipods iphones, Ipads and the like now.

So yeah. A busy few weeks.

But enough about me. How have you been? Did you get that boil seen to in the end?

[Updated] OFWGKTA, the Academy

Better late than never, eh?

Apologies for the delay, but here are the rest of my choices from OFWGKTA. It got much heavier once we got out of the pit, with Tyler crowd surfing several times, despite being in a cast with a broken foot. The crowd lapped it up – and fell over quite a few times. It was like a punk gig, or something. Terrible day to be a bouncer, I’d imagine. Anyway, enjoy this lot!

l