It started snowing in London last night and I forgot how much I love it. The city looks so beautiful. Can’t wait to hit the Austrian Alps next week for some snowboarding.

I grew up skateboarding and in school we always used to wish for the days when we would have the most free time so we could skate everyday all day … that was a pretty unrealistic dream as with leaving school comes a lot of responsibilities and the need to work in order to get by … meaning much less skateboarding time … or ever free time in general.

Anyway, a few of my friends have moved over to London now and we’ve decided to try and skate every Saturday (where possible) and we’ve even met a bunch of other super nice guys to roll with. It’s been fun getting back into it again although I’m a lot more calculated now and definitely don’t think falling is as cool or funny as it used to be. Haha.

My friend Brendan (Monteiro) has joined us a few times to film and he shot some photos the last time round so I could teach him a bit about lighting. This is my favourite one he shot last time and although it’s not the greatest trick ever I do love having one of myself, because it was always me shooting.

I just took this photo of my iMac monitor using instagram.

I’ve been getting a lot of requests from people why I am not updating this as much so I thought I’d try put in a little more effort. It just gets hard with time being short but I figured if I could do this from my iPhone then that would help loads because I could do it while I’m traveling and in between scene changes on shoots.

This is my first test and the image below is one I shot of Enter Shikari playing Banquet Records. They’re amazing live. You can see more of the photo set on my music blog on London Band Photography.

Here is to more blogging. Hope you’re all well.

I honestly feel proud and privileged to live in London city and am sad about what is going on with the riots. I understand peaceful protests against a cause you believe in but people coming outside of our apartment and destroying things we worked hard to make is bullshit. Stealing TV’s, burning down historic buildings, hurting innocent people, destroying shops and vandalism is just taking the piss.

During times like this I always seem to find people / groups that honestly have the biggest hearts and truly care about change. Activism and unity in people for the right cause is amazing and I support that all the way. Please check out http://www.riotcleanup.co.uk/ and help fix our homes and let’s all unite together to keep each other safe.

Youth charged positive change … that’s what makes a difference.

UPDATE: For some reason the guys website has been taken down so please follow their cause on Twitter on http://twitter.com/riotcleanup

I have a bit of an obsession with camera’s in general and have quite a few ranging from the cheapest plastic piece of junk to pinhole guess-takers to high end digital to medium format and 35mm film cameras new, old and older. I just recently got another Miranda G in amazing condition with such a great bunch of accessories and I am really excited to shoot with her a lot more on personal projects.

Anyway, I loaded a roll of film quick just to get some shots through to test if she has any light leaks and that all is working. I don’t have a battery for the lightmeter yet because it’s still on the way but I used the sunny 16 rule along with some guessing and I’m very happy with how she shoots.

Unfortunately the lab scanned them in the worst quality ever so I am definitely going to need to invest in my own scanner soon and then I don’t have to worry about inconsistencies every time I send a roll for processing.

These are a few of the ones I liked from the roll I shot these last few days. I loaded a PocketWizard on and have been experimenting a bit more so will post a few of those soon. They looking awesome.

You’ve got to love film … think and shoot and if you do it right then no processing.

I have been shooting a lot of personal stuff to keep my mind focused on photography being a hobby that I am passionate about and not just work. Don’t get me wrong … I love photography and everytime I shoot but it is nice to sometimes shoot just for myself and remember what it was that grabbed me about photography. I took this with my iPhone just because I thought it’s funny to share. My old 1960′s baby (Miranda G) with a PocketWizard. Photographers will know this is a good combo.

I know I have been sucking at updating this blog as days go by but it’s just hard when things are really busy and I am sure that everyone can relate to that at some point.

I thought that it would be cool to post up 2 shots taken while out shooting recently down in Coventry and obviously at Tower Bridge.

These were just shot with my iPhone and posted with Instagram. Check that app out. It’s awesome.

Will post more soon when I get back to the UK.

My good friend and fellow photographer, Byron Rode, has been working hard developing an application for mac and I’ve been using it for about a month now and honestly love it.

It’s called medialoadr and it’s basically a simple drag & drop media uploader for WordPress. I’ve created accounts for each of the 9 WordPress sites I have access to and when I update now I just drag the images / files I want from my finder onto the menubar icon and select the relevant account to which the files need to upload to. When I log in next time to that account the images / files are in the media library. So good ….

If you own a mac, use WordPress and have a spare $4.99 make sure to download this App to make your life easier. It’s definitely worth the money.

I worked on a shoot last week and the weather was just really beautiful. It was cold but the sky was clear and super blue. I love days like that. Thought I’d shoot a photo.

My friends from Revolution are throwing a free Christmas party on the 16th of December in downtown Johannesburg with a bunch of amazing exhibitions from artists and photographers and I feel lucky that some of my work will be up during the time.

If you are in South Africa and care about making a change then you should make sure to get down to this event and support the movement of cleaning up Johannesburg and the “amazing-ness” that the city can bring.

It’s basically a FREE skate, music and art Christmas party. What an amazing combo.

For more information on the event check out the Facebook page here.

Free Revolution Xmas Party going down on Thursday 16th Dec in Joburg! Facebook event info HERE.

- AV Skateboarding Issue 9 Screening
- Live performances by Ramblin’ Bones, Car Crash Burn and more
- Free skateboarding in the brand new basement skatepark
- Photography exhibitions by Rudi Jeggle, Marcus Maschwitz, Tyrone Bradley, Skate For Change and more
- Skate art exhibition by Verb artists Theory One, Kronk, Wesley van Eeden, Chemistry 101, Love and Hate and more
- Music Video exhibition by Louis Minnaar
- Verb Zine launch
- Food and drinks
- Free giveaways

I haven’t posted on here properly in a while because I have been super busy and this is a good excuse. Haha.

I was contacted a while ago by a really cool couple that are getting married later this year. Trina’s family following tradition wanted to show photos of the two of them on their wedding day so we met up for a shoot in the beautiful Morden Hall Park on a really warm day out.

At the time I was being assisted by two very helpful and fun ladies (Maya and Robin) that were out in London on a work experience placement from Holland. It was great working with them and sadly they have gone back to finish off their studies.

Anyway, this is a photo or Trina and James sitting on a park bench in the full sunlight and then the next photo I took a little further back so you can see Maya and Robin supporting a Profoto light with a big softbox to break the couple out from the killer sun. I thought I would share and use this to wish Trina and James all the best with their journey forward together. Getting married is a fun time.

I also liked these scenes so posting a few more.

A few of the bands that I have worked with recently convinced me to create a Facebook Fan Page for my work so I did exactly that and it’s one of the easiest places for me to keep up to date and connect with so if you are on Facebook make sure to hook up with me on facebook.com/marcusmaschwitzphotography

For those of you that don’t know I also work as a website designer when I get asked and on projects that I know are going to work out exciting. Verb is an amazing skateboarding company that has just launched today and I finished off their website in preparation for this and it has just gone live. I love the way that it came out and it is one of my favourites sites so far.

You can see it on weareverb.com