so, in the next couple of days i will be shooting the production shots for the west end transfer of "the mystery of edwin drood" at the arts theatre, so i thought now was a good time to post some of the shots taken last month at the landor theatre in clapham.

drood is produced by katy lipson for aria entertainment and directed by matthew gould. lighting design by ben m rogers, costume by jean gray, set by natasha piper. the cast is natalie day, victoria farley, daniel robinson, wendi peters, loula geater, david francis, denis delahunt, richard stirling, oliver mawdsley, christopher coleman, paul hutton, tom pepper and ben goffe.

ladies and gentlemen, i give you..... the mystery of edwin drood....

oh yes, and did i mention that the audience chooses the outcome of the show due to the fact that dickens never finished the book. :-)

recently i've been involved with the revival of "the mystery of edwin drood" - a musical working of dickens' last novel, created by rupert holmes. it played last month at the landor theatre in clapham north and this week moves to the arts theatre in the west end for a limited run. set in a fictional victorian music hall company this show has 100s of possible endings as the audience are asked to vote on plot details that dickens didn't have time to finish.

a couple of months ago i found myself in bermondsey with 3 of the stars of the show... natalie day who plays drood, victoria farley who plays rosa budd and daniel robinson who plays john jasper. within 2 small streets we found all the locations we could need for shots with conjured the atmosphere of the show and these 3 made my life extremely easy, they were a joy to photograph.

this really is the kind of photography i love best, as it combines my love of theatre and portraits, also the performers are more at ease as they are posing as their character instead of as themselves, something which even the most confident people can struggle with.

we had the perfect day for these images, clean cold cloudy light that really accentuated the chalky colours of their costumes. can you tell that i just had a ball making these images? ;-)

drood is produced by katy lipson for aira entertainment and directed by matthew gould.

a couple of weeks ago i dropped by the rehearsals for a brilliant new musical that my friend drew baker is directing, they were rehearsing in an old office building and it definitely led to some interesting shots, and slightly strange light to play with.

here's their blurb about the show, i'm sure the people who are making the show can describe it better than me who was just making some images and enjoying the performance....

"We are sipping on Fosters cans. We are making some impossible plans. We’re getting out of here as fast as we can.”

Young writer Tamar Broadbent (book, music and lyrics) presents Pierced, a fresh take on coming-of-age with an original score that powerfully represents the voice of the 21st Century 18-year-old.

Pierced is a comic but touching portrayal of youth today, with all its idealism, ambition and awkward comedy. It follows the stories of five teenagers in the summer after finishing school, as they cope with obsessive crushes, divorcing parents, dreams of winning the X Factor and the thrall of advanced Facebook stalking.

Pierced channels the voice of youth today: it is an insightful reflection of the social life and identity of a generation.

The musical is being workshopped and rehearsed with director Drew Baker (Children of Eden).

CAST AND CREATIVE: Composer - Tamar Broadbent. Director - Drew Baker. Musical Director - Jamie Noar. Cast - Dougie Carter, Rosanna Colclough, Sam Hallion, Lauren Austin, Liam Ross Mills.

on sunday 11th march the family, friends and fans of douglas adams collected together at the hammersmith hmv apollo for a concert of science, silliness and song to celebrate the great man's 60th birthday and raise money for save the rhino of which douglas was a patron.

i was mainly backstage, shooting portraits of the performers for the guys at save the rhino but i was lucky enough to be able to sneak front of house and shoot some show shots, albeit from slightly further back than i'd like to have been!

performing on the day were.... sanjeev bhaskar, clive anderson, terry jones, john lloyd, jon culshaw, robin ince, simon singh, helen keen, rory mcgrath, angus deayton, michael fenton stevens, philip pope and sue sheridan.

to top off an already amazing evening, the concert closed with a performance from douglas's dream band, fronted by gary brooker of procol harum and david gilmour of pink floyd. and yes, i did have a pinch myself moment of.... "oh my goodness, i'm photographing david gilmour singing wish you were here at hammersmith apollo"!!

i get asked on a regular basis what my "favourite" musical is.... the answer is always the same "i have three.... west side story, jesus christ superstar & rent", if asked to elaborate i'll answer that each of these three shows changed the face of musical theatre irrevocably and forever. west side story for it's sheer scale and brilliance, jesus christ superstar because no-one had really used guitars in theatre orchestration like that before and rent... well, because rent reached out to a new generation of theatregoers, speaking to them in a way that nothing else was doing. i think you have to be within a certain age range the first time you see rent to truly "get" it, i was 21 and alone in london, trying to find my way. at that show i met people and encountered situations that still mean the world to me.

rent and, by definition, it's writer jonathan larson changed my life forever.

when larson was writing rent he was pretty much broke, living in the east village and working at the, now destroyed, moondance diner (for the pop culture geeks out there, it's the same diner where mary jane works in the spiderman films!). he'd had several show ideas go nowhere and so he wrote a stack of songs, a pop-rock monologue, which he performed for friends and others around the performance nights in soho. he was battling with self-doubt on one hand and single-minded determination on the other. he couldn't see a way out, but he couldn't see anything else he could possibly do. oh yeah, and he was obsessed with steven sondheim.

after jon's sudden death in 1996 and the subsequent success of rent - he died on the night of it's final dress rehearsal at new york workshop theatre - a few of his friends decided to structure his ranty, comedic, emotional monologue into a 3 person show. that show is tick tick boom... and as the press copy has always stated "before rent, jonathan larson had another story to tell.... his own"

so, here we have the most recent london production of TTB, starring tony james-andersson as jon, jj criss as his best friend michale and natalie viccars as his long-suffering girlfriend susan. the production was staged at the bridewell theatre by maple giant theatre, directed by amy cooke-hodgson, with musical direction by steven wiggins and design by ben m rogers.

the bridewell is an old swimming pool and i don't think i've ever seen it look more beautiful than in the following set-up.

thank you jonathan larson...

a few weeks back i dropped by the soho theatre to shoot some production shots for a beautiful new show called a song cycle for soho starring claire moore, james gillan, michael cantwell and naimh perry. you can read a nice article about the show here on the ofiicial london theatre website.

it showcases new musical theatre writing at it's best with songs from the likes of stiles & drewe, dougal irvine and stuart matthew price and is a must for all musical theatre fans. i believe there will be a cast recording soon, available through simg productions. check them out on twitter - @sohosongcycle - for more info on that.

it was an absolute delight to create these images as i had complete rein to shoot from wherever i liked and no-one was at all bothered by my prescence. so a treat when it comes to small scale theatre, normally there isn't much time for production photography. here are some of my favourites....

claire moore, james gillan, naimh perry and michael cantwell

it may have been noticed that i don't tend to actually write much on this blog, i annotate images but my blogging doesn't really run to thought and opinions.

but once in a while i get started in a discussion that makes me rant or think or just get excited about things and i thought i should just write those thoughts down, especially as they relate to photography.

every now and again someone will say to me "i've bought a cool camera, can you show me how to use it?" - excellent, another person who i can bore with my insane love of cameras, i think. however it swiftly becomes apparent that we don't need to talk about cameras, we need to talk about photography..... photography 101 to be precise.

now i don't profess to knowing anywhere near as much as a lot of people, i didn't go to college for photography, they wouldn't let me do it as part of the my a-level art at my painting obsessed 6th form :-)

but i do know how i learnt how to take a photo, and it comes down to 2 simple words.... practice and love.

practice, because nothing becomes good without a bit of repetition

and love, because without that you won't ever do the practice bit.

i honestly, actively, stupidly love photography. my own, that of others, big-budget, small-budget, high fashion, low-tech iphonography and everything in between.

i talk about photography, i think about photography, sometimes i even dream about photography. and because of that i taught myself how to create the images i want to see, and every time i take a shot i learn something new. i was the kid with the camera at school, even at primary school i took a camera on school trips.

when i decided as an adult that i wanted to do more than compact snaps i was lucky enough to be given an old eos 5, a beautiful film camera that i should shoot more on. and to learn how to use it i had a notebook in which i would write the settings for each frame i shot so that when i got the film back i could understand where i'd gone wrong.

when i got more confident that i could trust a canon light meter with my life i started setting myself projects and tasks. the image at the top of the post is from a holiday to NYC back in 2006 when i only "allowed" myself black and white film for the whole week. around that time i also bought an old lubitel 166 box camera for 10 quid on ebay. that's completely about guessing, but i got pretty good at guessing when the film costs a lot to process...

another thing that totally changed the way i looked at photography was the point i bought myself a 50mm f1.8 prime lens. i think the world - or at least the part of it that involves itself with flickr - is split into 2 parts, those that can't understand why you'd "restrict" yourself to a prime lens and those who fully understand the brilliance of the cheapest bit of glass most camera companies produce.

i'll tell anyone who'll listen that the first thing you should do is take off that horrid, horrid kit lens and spend 80 quid on a "nifty fity", it will teach you more about photography, your camera and how it works than any manual, and it's definitely a lot more fun!

and i guess that's my point of all this waffle.... you will never learn anything about your camera if you don't take photos constantly, and you won't take photos constantly unless you love it and you're having fun. and that's how i try to answer that age-old question of "can you show me how to take photos like you do?"....

get rid of the kit lens, invest in a 50mm - it's an investment you'll never regret.

learn about how light works, really really look at how light works.

take photos. take photos. and then take more photos.

and most importantly....

love it. and if you don't love it, put the camera away and find something you do love.

since school i've known a gentleman by the name of mr paul l martin, he's always been pretty fabulous. paul runs excess all areas and last week they created the 1st london cabaret awards.

i was asked to drop by and take some photos of everyone arriving, it was such fun to be surrounded by the great, the good and the downright crazy of the london cabaret scene. particularly fun when people started actually dragging others over to be photographed. :-)

here's just a few of my favourites....

over the last couple of months of 2011 and into this new year i was involved in a project which filled me with joy again and again.

some of the folks i'd worked with on last 5 years back in february last year were producing a west end gala performance of stephen schwartz's children of eden in aid of the crohn's disease charity. they asked me to make some promo images for them.

i talked with the producers and the designer and we decided to create some images that were something a little more than just a portrait of each performer. i wanted to make images that said something about the person, their character in the show and would look right as part of the overall set.

much of the show is based around light and knowledge, the spark of creation. so i wanted to make images where each person was interacting with the "light" as their character does in the show.

i had so much fun making these images, meeting all the wonderful people involved in the show all of whom just went with my slightly wacky ideas and were the perfect models. i'm really proud of what we made together.

lauren samuels - yonah - photographed in the auditorium of the dominion theatre.

oliver thornton - adam.

russell grant - snake.

tom pearce - noah.

waylon jacobs - japeth.

anton stephans - father - this is the first of the set, i think we took 30 frames in total, then spent more time having coffee. a great way to start the project.

brenda edwards - mama noah.

gareth gates - cain - this was on a super-cold night just before christmas, under the chiswick flyover.

john wilding - abel.

louise dearman - eve.

kerry ellis - photographed at paramount bar and restaurant.

aaron sidwell - ham.

i first met ilona about 4 years ago when she was part of the company of CATS in cyprus, she wowed the place with her aerial ballet on a hoop above a huge ampitheatre. Ilona's currently working on a solo performance piece with cellist louise mcmonagle which will be performed at the linbury studio, royal opera house at the end of this month (23rd-25th feb).

watching ilona rehearse or perform is a beautiful experience, she looks so delicate but then she holds herself from one hand, high above the floor, as easily as anyone else would sit on a bench.

here's just a few images from their rehearsals - it all went a bit retro with the processing, probably shouldn't have been watching "we'll take manhattan" at the same time, love the grainy-ness though ....