Steve Harley Entertainment Promo Shoot

Steve Harley Entertainment recently got in contact, looking for some promo shots for some of the themed character work they are doing for Christmas themed balls, and Winter Wonderland parties. Steve had come across my work, and felt that my style would be perfect for capturing and conveying their big bright and larger than life image.

The brief was to capture as much of the movement, motion, colour and detail as possible. Performing as these characters is all about exaggeration, and the photos really had to reflect this. To stand any chance of standing out, the photos had to g one step further and add to this exaggeration.

I have worked with a few performing artists in the past, so I had a good idea of how I was going to work with them. On this shoot, however, I really wanted to make some exceptional photos that had an instant impact and wow factor. I wanted the characters to jump out of the page and to convey as much energy and emotion as they were putting into their performances.

The costumes and makeup were fantastic! Amazing attention to detail had been paid in the costume design, and it took Steve and the girls around 2 hours to apply the intricate makeup and get ready. It was therefore incredibly important to reflect all this hard work in the photos.

I had a great time shooting Steve and the girls, the whole shoot was fun from beginging to end. They were a pleasure to work with, and I’m very pleased with the results! I can’t wait to shoot with them again

Justice @ The MixMag Christmas Party - The Egg, London - 5th December 2008

After a hefty tour of the country, MixMag brought their Christmas party back to the place where they kicked things off - The Egg Nightclub, Kings Cross, London.

The launch night of the tour had been a massive sellout success, with ques right around the building until the very early hours.

Bearing this in mind, and with a world class line up of acts booked including Justice, Timo Maas, Santos, Caspa & Rusko, Chase & Status - The Christmas party was always going to be very busy.

I was advised to get down very early if I was to stand a chance of getting in smoothly, and arrived around 7:45pm - I traveled down from Birmingham straight after covering The Loo of the Year Awards 2008, so it was a pretty hectic day, and my head was still spinning with all the latest technological advancements in washroom technologies.

We got in no problem, and were treated to some lovely VIP treatment until doors at 10pm. The club filled up pretty quickly - and as Justice’s set approached, the main room reached capacity with anticipation of seeing such a huge act in such an intimate setting. For those unable to get into the main room, music from the main room was being pumped through the silent disco headphones - which is a great idea!

Ive been to many big clubs before with multiple rooms, and when a huge headline act plays, suddenly everyone in the club is trying to squeeze into one area, and you get a que and a 1 in 1 out policy. It’s no surprise to me, and just one of those unavoidable things. The great thing was that there were so many other amazing acts playing that night, and overall the club wasn’t too packed.

Justice played a blinding set, to a very very sweaty crowd. I spent a couple of minutes in the dj booth getting some pics, and the energy coming from the crowd and focused towards that pair of decks was immense. For those that witnessed it, it was definitely an unforgettable performance, and one unlikely to be seen in the near future.

Thanks MixMag for throwing the Christmas party of the year

A round up of Saturday’s Birmingham Nightlife

I’m gearing up my coverage of Birmingham at the moment, as part of the work I’m doing for MySpace. So rather than just covering events I’m interested in, or events that I’m already involved with taking photos - I’m starting to branch out and have a looksee whats about.

Birmingham has such a diverse range of quality night on every week, and this Saturday saw me get myself and lens along to The Big Dirty @ Rainbow Warehouse and TRMNL @ TRMNL, which is in the Jewelery Quarter.

The Big Dirty qualified as my second dubstep event of the weekend, with the almighty Benga headlining. With two large capacity (1000+) dubstep events in the city over the space of two days, it just goes to show how much dubstep has progressed from the underground and into a more commercially viable genre. Typically there was a whole bunch of skanking and bass wobbling. An all round brilliant party, with live art being drawn up on the walls, and a more chilled out and funky vibe going on in the garden terrace.

After I headed up to the Jewelery quarter to cover a new venue and night called TRMNL - This brand new venue is pretty well equipped, with some really nice intelligent lighting that runs the length of the ceiling (looks almost identical to the setup in the new Spektrum club in Manchester), and they also boast FunktionOne sound. The seem to offer a more upmarket and trendier sound, with plenty of Techno and Jackin’ House sounds. The club is nice and intimate, and has a lovely roof terrace area upstairs, which is covered and heated fr the comfort of smokers.

MySpace have picked one of my photos to be the winner of “Photo of the Week” on their new clubbing/ gig section.

It’s a photo I took at BedBug in Bournemouth for MixMag back in Nov 2007, and seems to have struck a chord:

“This week’s best photo comes from Brum based Tom Horton who has perfectly captured a moment of club euphoria. We want some of what this girl’s having!!”

I’m very happy to have been featured, and I’ll get a whole week’s worth of very welcome exposure

You can see the profile here: www.myspace.com/pix

and my profile here: www.myspace.com/tom_horton

It’s been a little while since I’ve blogged, so time to give you all an update on whats been going on.

It’s been a busy couple of months for me, I’ve been all over the country shooting clubs for MixMag which has been fantastic. In recent weeks I’ve been to Dundee, Leicester, London, and most recently Bristol. It may come as no surprise that London is the best place for taking photos, its always someway ahead of the rest of the country in terms of style, music, and general fashionable vibes. That’s not to say that other cities are in the dark ages, there are a lot of great clubs outside London that are pushing the boundaries outside the Capital.

All the photos are in the gallery: or click here MulletOver in London, MixMag on Tour in Leicester, Fruity Antics in Bristol, and Okupa in Dundee

I’ve been providing photos for the JDRF (Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation) since the summer- covering all their fundraising events, family days, and presentations. You can see pics from the 0808 Festival and Infinity Festival which I covered for them in the galleries. Their biggest fundraising event of the year is “The Walk to Cure Diabetes” which is a sponsored 5K walk held all over the country, with the West Midlands event being held at Drayton Manor. Unfortunately the day was a complete wash out, and all the exciting activities normally done outside such as the warm up, tea coffee and registration were all crammed into the circus tent.

They had planned for me to go up in a cherry picker to get some great aeriel shots, however the rain kept everybody inside until the start and this was a no go. The rain failed to dampen the spirits of the hundreds of people that turned up, and with the release of a large amount of balloons, everybody marched onwards in force. Many people had formed teams, and there was a lot smiles and cheeriness all day long. Despite the awful weather and cramped conditions, I was still able to get some great shots from the day, and it was really helped by the enthusiasm of everybody involved. Click here to check out the JDRF Walk to Cure photos.

In between this I have been going back to the University of Birmingham from which I graduated last year, to give some talks, presentations and workshops to the Photographic Society. I’ll be covering quite a few topics, and I’m hoping to part as much of my knowledge, wisdom, and tips as possible. My aim really is to generate as much enthusiasm for photography and making great pictures as possible. It wasn’t too long ago that I was a member myself, and its a wonderful opportunity to be able to give some back.

I’ve also been finding time to go out in Birmingham, highlights this month include Drop Beats Not Bombs, Ultra+, and Habit. Coming up I’ll be covering Ultra & Excentric on the 22nd Nov at the Rainbow Warehouse, which should be huge. Atomic Jam are also returning on the same night to celebrate their 13th birthday, I’ll try and pop across ad have a looksee.

6 pages of photos - all from Sven Vath gig at Q Club, Birmingham. To accompany review and for their listings pages.

So here a few of my favorite shots from this years festivals:

The Observer used a couple of small pics from The Glade Festival last sunday (27th July 2008).

You can see the rest of the pics I took in the galleries section glade festival photos

I’ll have to do a write up to tell you how brilliant a weekend it was

Went along to the Sunday hoping for many a free sample of food (had bailed on the first two days due to excessive rain and lack of umbrella). Unfortunately for my tummy, the majority of samples had to be paid for, and not in hard currency either, but in an odd made up pseudo money called “crowns”.

Exchange your money for bits of paper that can only be used inside the event to be exchanged for little bits of food. I don’t think so. I hung around the olive and the cheese stalls, which seemed to be the only one giving out free samples.

The button on my Nikon d50 that zooms into photos is also the button that changes the ISO - so most of the images ended up being shot at 1600 - thankyou poorly designed multi function button, I reckon this is a serious design flaw!

Big up review and the rest of my photos over at whatsoninbrum

Took some photos when I went back home the other day - plenty of interesting things to photograph, heres a selection: