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.

A few weeks ago the guys over at Quint Magazine contacted me about featuring my work in their next issue which would be known as their music issue. I flipped through a few copies of the magazine and really liked what they were doing so I agreed and today the magazine hit the shelves. Currently the magazine is only available in Dubai (stocked in all Virgin Megastores) but is also available to read for free online.

I answered a few questions about what it is like working as a music photographer here in London and you can read all about it from page 56 of issue 12. Read it for free here. The rest of the magazine is very cool too so give it a full read. I feel really grateful for this so “thanks guys”.

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 went on tour with the boys from We Are The Ocean for a few days (London, Bristol and Stoke) to promote the release of their latest album and I photographed and video’d the tour as it went on. The guys are super nice and I love working with them so it was a great time together.

This video is just some of that footage.

The album is called GO NOW AND LIVE and track playing through this video is from the album and it is ‘Overtime Is A Crime’. Make sure to get a copy of it … it’s a cracker.

Some of the photos from the tour can be seen HERE.

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.

We decided to continue enjoying the snow on thursday night after a good previous night and headed out with our snowboards and some lights and set up our own little session near Croydon after midnight and even ended up building a small jump which Jason hit a few times in the complete dark (thanks to me forgetting to charge the lights fully).

It was one of my funnest nights in a while thanks to Jason and Jude and some frozen powdered water.

A few months back I did a promo shoot with Jelluzz for his single “It’s My City” which has just dropped. I had a lot of fun on the shoot and Jelluzz was really cool to work with and seeing his music video now for the new track, it feels exciting to know that I was involved. To launch the single he has revamped his MySpace and I took a screen grab to show how it looks with one of my photo’s in there. I have also attached 3 other photo’s from the shoot that I really like.

Definitely check him out, I think he is going to be huge.

Currently listening to : Zebra and Giraffe – Black Crow.

I shot some self-timed fun portraits with some of our good friends about a week back and I thought I would put one of them up on here. This one is one of my favourites because we are all looking at the camera and not playing too much of the fool like the rest of them.

Last week my friend Warren and I took a walk down the river around the South Bank area just to catch up one night. We both took our camera’s too shoot some happy snaps of the city but it was so full up with people that it made it really hard to shoot without either getting in the way or getting other people in the shots (which I really didn’t want) so I only ended up shooting a few.

It was an amazing night and I am feeling motivated to do this kind of thing more and wait for the right time to shoot so that I get the image I am looking for as apposed to just shooting because I want a photo. I really like the first one the most – no matter how cliche’d it is and how many times I imagine it to be shot already. It was quite hard because we also had limited night time considering that the first image I shot for the night was of big ben around 10pm and the sky was still light and the last tube out back home was about 2 hours later. It’s really amazing that the days are so long.

Ok, so I feel really bad that I haven’t updated this blog in a LONG while but things have just been really crazy here and I have spent all my spare time updating / upgrading my actual photography website as well as sorting out Myspace‘s and then trying to live and enjoy some time with my beautiful misses.

Anyway, I haven’t forgotten about this and I haven’t not been shooting, it’s just how it goes some times but now that I get closer to the final stages of personal website updating, I am making it a listed thing to make sure to spend time on here so look out for a bunch of catch up posts REAL soon as well as a bunch of new posts. I have put together a list of personal assignment shoots that I want to do in the next few months and these will obviously all go on here as I go along.

Other than that, I hope you are all well and that you will enjoy these two photographs that I shot while working in the last week. Both of them were taken around 21h00 / 21h30 during sunset. It’s so cool that the days last so long.

Keep well and thanks for all the mails supporting me while all these big changes go through. It’s an exciting time for me for sure and I am REALLY starting to push myself more than I ever have.

Thanks also for reading. Marcus

Well I have just added an update on the portraits that I have shot in the last week or 2 so this is an update with some of the live shots that I have taken recently which have all been really amazing. I will be adding more soon and you can read more about the shows as well as see more photographs from each of the shows on my band photography blog on www.londonbandphotography.co.uk.

The bands included in these photographs are : The Gaslight Anthem, New Found Glory, Bayside, The Bronx, Therapy? and NOFX.

Wow, it seems like I have been shooting a lot of bands lately and to be honest I have. I have also been shooting a lot of other stuff but it is hard for me to keep this up to date some times so I will make the effort to do so a bit later this week after I am done with the shoots I have booked. Anyway, I really enjoy working with bands and this is another one that really makes me remember what I enjoy about it all. These photos are of a band called Native Souls and I really like them as a band but also as individuals and it was an absolute pleasure working with them. I worked with these guys (and girl) on sunday and we just walked around the side streets near the river trying to find some back alleys to work with to match their urban sound. I cannot wait to shoot some live stuff with them in the next few weeks so look out for them on there.

I shot some photographs for a new band this week and the guys were really cool. I had so many laughs and we all found it quite hard to keep serious and focus on what we were doing and this is the result of too many Will Farrell movies and too many episodes of Flight of the Concords. Haha.

The guys are busy working on their music now focusing a lot on their sound and making sure they have a really good package before they put anything out there. I have a lot of photographs but do not want to give away too much so I am just posting these few. They aren’t the best of the set but they give a good idea of the locations we shot at and the guys having fun. I will update you on these guys as they progress because I think they will be something to look out for especially after hearing the previews of their stuff.

Have a good weekend. Marcus

Today we (my misses and I) had a super fun day out in the sun at Hyde Park with our good friends Warren and Andrea. It was really a relaxing time and we just spent the afternoon having a picnic and enjoying the outdoors and talking and getting lazy. Warren has recently bought himself a camera to play with so I brought mine along in case we got some time to shoot photos together and I ended up shooting some fun snaps of the group at sunset which is now peaking at around 8:15pm. I had very little gear with me but I made do with what I had and think that some really cool moments have been captured here. I did make a rookie school boy mistake and shot only in JPEG for some weird unknown reason so I have decided not to do any post work on these except for resizing. We were just playing the fool and some of them are slightly incorrectly exposed because of the light being moved over or aimed in the wrong direction but I like them and would really like to know what you think so comment if you have the time.

I hope you are all well. Marcus

Last night I photographed Bloc Party which was really amazing. When we moved to London just over 3 months ago I bought tickets for the Wife and I to go because it is one of her most favourite bands. I didn’t think that 3 months later I would be commissioned to go and shoot the show so it was an absolute honour and I gave my ticket to our sister and the 3 of us went to party.

They were amazing and so super humble and that makes me like them even more. I love it so much when bands remember where they came from and thank their listeners for getting them to where they are because without them bands would never get big. These are a few of the photographs that I shot during the show, I have a whole lot more and will try sort through them later and try add a few more if I get a chance. In the meantime enjoy these and if you would like to see some more, you can do so by visiting my Music Photography Blog by Clicking HERE.

Have a super day and keep well. Marcus

We were driving back from the store a few minutes ago and the sunset is amazing so I had to shoot a photograph of it from our bedroom window as soon as we got back. I love the streams that the aircrafts leave in the sky.

I hope that everyone reading this is well.

I spent sunset today walking over the Waterloo Bridge and taking it all in. I love the London skylines and this is definitely one of my favourite, with the view of the London Eye, Big Ben, Houses of Parliament and the River. I have always wanted to shoot some good photographs but my time has always been limited so I have promised myself that I will be pulling finger from now on. I shot this photo today and am quite happy with it, it isn’t what I had in mind but I will make sure to keep scouting for that perfect day.

I hope that you are all well and that 2009 is treating you well so far. M

Today I spent the day walking around Camden Town with my lady and as always, it was a fun time with her. The weather was good and there was a lot of people out. I shot this photo, just because it makes me so excited every time I see that from the road and I know we are walking in the right direction. Haha.

We will be staying with our friends, Nik and Keli, for a while so that we can find our feet and I shot some photographs at the station yesterday while we made our way into London Town for the day. The weather is PROPER cold but it really feels good to snuggle up all warm. These are just a few photographs. Might be quiet until I sort all my gear out again.

I have been running around London like a fool for the last few days and it’s been really amazing. The weather was perfect every single day and everything just worked out as best as it could’ve. I sadly bumped my camera off a bridge into the Thames so my shooting stopped a bit earlier than planned. That was the dumbest thing I have ever done. Shame, my poor camera.

Jude got his sleeve finished off on saturday and I shot a few photo’s. I cant remember the details of the place so I will add that a bit later. Yogie was the tattoo artist and he is from Mexico. He really was such an interesting guy.

I am staying with my friends, Jude and Trysie, at their home in Colliers Wood in London and the day before yesterday was one of the nicest sunsets I have ever seen. I shot a few photos but don’t have my raw software with me so it’s not as nice as it can be.

I love flying so much. This is a photo I shot on wednesday night on the Nationwide Airlines flight I had to London.

Anja has been making a cool scrap book of our trip to London and I saw this photo yesterday that we shot together in Leicester Square aiming towards our home. It’s actually to Pretoria and we stay in Johannesburg but it is close enough when you think about the distance we are away. Good times.

Ok, so I tried something new the other day when we were on the bus through London. It was raining but really a good day so I had to make sure to get some stuff for our memory book. Black and white is amazing …..

We went to visit my friend, Jude, at Fulham Football Club last week and it is right on the river Thames. Anyway, he took us on the raddest personal tour of the club and it was such a good day together. I don’t know much about soccer but they are my new favourite team. Haha. This is a photo of Anja walking along the river. I really think she looks so pretty in this.

Not much else to say except for “London Baby”. Decided to take my camera out yesterday for a bit so these are some of the photos. Will be shooting a lot more as the days go on but it is hard to try shoot pro stuff when we are running around like PROPER tourists. Haha. Have a super day ……….. London Baby !!!