A crazy week, a mixed blog.

I’ve had a completely hectic week with college work deadlines all colliding, meaning regular blogging once again took a back seat.

I have to say that I’m delighted this week is nearly over, having had to hand in assignments and speeches, an Ethnographic study of a social group (I chose boy-racers), make a portfolio, do a job interview for an entertainment publicist and begin primary research for my thesis.

With little free time I still have a huge backlog of photos to work on. I did post one new tattoo portrait (seen above) on my website, an awesome back-piece based on a Derek Hess design, once again inked by tattoo artist Sean Boon from the Vibe Studio, Mullingar. And there’s plenty more tattoo shots to come and body-paint shots including a full-body bio-organic piece which took Sean 5 hours to paint. As soon as I have the time to go through them!

On Wednesday night I was the official photographer for the elainECurtis charity fashion show, of her Spring-Summer 2008 collection. All of the proceeds from the fashion show went to Saplings School: Providing a unique education for children with Autism.

Ridiculously, the Sapling School in Carlow is only part funded by the Dept. of Education and must raise an extra €150 - €200 thousand each year to keep the school operating. This is not a big school, there’s only a handful of families trying to raise this money each year, just to provide the education much needed to improve the pupil’s lives. If you can, help them out and make a donation here!!! The charity fashion show held by elainECurtis no doubt helped raise much needed funds for the Sapling School with over 400 people in attendance at the show, but they still need more!

From a photography point of view it was a great opportunity for me to shoot my first fashion show (thanks Chelley) and it was quite possibly one of the most stressful shoots ever (thanks bad luck!). I got there a couple of hours in advance, checked out the lights and tested settings, I was perfectly set to go, well in advance. The doors opened, hundreds of women poured in, I mingled with other photographers, it was ridiculously warm and then it began. I did some promo shots with Elaine, her team of staff and the models, then the models began on the cat-walk, I started to shoot and then for absolutely no reason my camera stopped working!?

I don’t think I can even begin to describe the mixture of shock, panic and worry that was going through my head as I tried everything from the batteries to the memory card with no success. Models constantly passing me by and my chances of getting shots slowly getting smaller. One panicked phonecall to the Chief and one panicked conversation with other photographers and still no luck. And then for no apparent reason, the camera started to work again!? No time to question it, back to work.

Shooting models on a cat-walk is surprisingly difficult (they move pretty damn quick for skinny girls!) Once they hit their mark, they’ll stop, pose, turn and move on. Leaving you with only split-seconds to frame, focus and shoot, all the while trying to remember that it’s the clothes your trying to shoot, not the models. I’m pretty happy with my first attempt and hopefully my shots will be appearing on the elainECurtis website very soon. Thanks once again to Chelly and Elaine for the opportunity.

The problem with the camera still has me puzzled, thankfully it seems to be fine now and thankfully this week is nearly over with me meeting all my deadlines.

Today I sent out my survey to selected independent musicians using MySpace.com. The survey is only phase one of my primary research, and if any bands reading this recieved the survey then please fill it out and return it as soon as possible. If you didn’t get one, but you put your band forward to be surveyed then my apologises. It’s nothing personal, I just had to meet specific demographics and requirements.

So hopefully I’ll be getting back to regular blogging next week, I’ve got lots of news including sneak previews of the upcoming 20BullsEach E.P and the Chemical Addiction E.P, both only at final mix stages but both sounding awesome. I’ll have more tattoo and body-paint shots, some news on Vultures Episode 2 and much more.

But for the weekend, myself and Ken are hitting Dublin for the Irish Blog Awards which is now sold out. Rumour has it that there’s a free bar for the finalists, so for anybody going to awards; Ken will be the guy to talk to if you basically want to talk about anything from music to technology, sport, you name it. I’ll be standing beside him, the guy with the mohawk, consuming copious amounts of free alcohol and saying things like “what the hell is a blog anyway!?”