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I have always wanted to spend time in Japan, for many reasons, especially because of gadgets like the Bowlingual Dog Translator. Realistically I just want a zany soundtrack (from the video) to start playing when crazy things happen.

There were plenty of ‘ironic’ T-shirts at the Electric Zoo Festival this weekend, and also plenty of dudes rocking the no shirt and bad tattoo look. This guy Eli who worked with the festival wins the best T-shirt contest by far!

For some of my pictures from the 2 day festival go here. It was a long 2 days on Randall’s Island with loads of really loud techno music blasting. I have to admit that I started to enjoy some of the music by the end, particularly Seth Troxler and Tom Middleton. The main acts, Armin Van Buuren and David Guetta, were both on the main stage and I’m told did some amazing sets. It became challenging to get a variety of images from what is essentially the same scenario – a man standing at a table twiddling knobs.

I can’t remember where I first saw Frederic Fontenoy’s work but I was surprised by how different the bodies of work looked and that I liked some of his Metamorphosis stuff from the 90’s. I think this was done with one of those Noblex panoramic rotating cameras, but it also looks like work I’ve seen that was made with a flatbed scanner that’s been converted into a camera.

I’m not so drawn to his recent work that seems too close to pornography.

I used to work in a number of outdoor retail stores, starting at “Blacks” in the UK, then “EMS “in NYC and Scarsdale and finally”American Terrain” in White Plains. In my last season at American Terrain, the owner Manny Polloni, bought a kayak company that has continued to grow over the years. Recently he contacted me and asked me to take some pictures for a possible article in the Journal News. Thankfully they used a few of them and even put me on the cover of the weekend edition. I don’t miss working retail ever, but do miss going out camping, kayaking and hiking with people.

An old friend of mine has been teaching this workshop in photography for young adults who use digital cameras to tell their own personal cancer stories. Go to the site, buy a ticket and go to one of the opening nights at the end of the month. Annabel has a book published about her own experience dealing with her mothers battle with cancer. Although I’ve seen many projects that are similar this one has some pretty striking images and pairs the photography with text from her mother, actress Lynn Redgrave.

“Death in Love” was one of the few movies I saw at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. I’d not followed its general release date so didn’t know that it had actually come out in theaters last month. I photographed Josh Lucas at the “New York Air Guitar Competition” and then recently met him backstage after a “Little Death” concert when he told me that it had been released. He was perfectly friendly, ranting about how bad some of the air guitar people were, but I don’t think he could believe that I’d actually seen the movie as it got pretty mixed reviews. Maybe it was the mountain air or the sleep deprivation during Sundance that made me enjoy it so much, either way I’d recommend seeing it (especially now that it’s probably had some of the more gruesome scenes edited out).

A friend, old coworker from my editing days and fellow event photographer Anthony Jacobs has a successful business that incorporates his love of model aircraft, filmmaking and photography – perspectiveaerials.com.

He’s had some great press including this article in PDN. If you can have a robot flying above things taking amazing pictures, then why do you need a monkey behind the camera on or near a red carpet? Maybe I’m just hoping for the sudden demise of red carpet photography? Could we have those little motion sensor cameras fitted with celebrity face recognition placed around L.A. to cover all paparazzi moments too? Anyway, here are some examples of what his little craft can do…

I can’t seem to get this image out of my head since I saw it yesterday. Having now looked through the rest of Peter Dench’s work on his website I’m quite the fan. He’s got a load of really strong work on there, but this one image is the most striking to me from the portfolio ‘drinkUK’

It’s been nearly 4 months since I’ve had a drink, which has led to a very productive summer but a very unsocial one. The British seem to make so much of their social life revolve around the idea of drinking that the idea of seeing friends and not having a drink has seemed odd. I’ve been keeping myself busy shooting events, but not necessarily making any money. The time has come to either start making some dollars, reconsider this whole event photography thing or get a mundane office job and start drinking again! I’d like to pick up some more work as an editorial photographer, so any tips or introductions on that front would be great! (Or you could just buy me one of these new 7D’s)

The advantage of standing among the crowd is that I got some nice close up shots and was able to get the occasional full length (here). However I was often battling against this… (the last image is completely my own fault!!)