Mine, Cheryl’s and Alice’s birthday party in Dalston last Friday was pretty awesome. The DJs and bands were excellent (big shout out to We Are Not A Rockband for kicking off with Yacht – Psychic City (Classixx Remix) and for basically playing loads of my favourite tunes) so massive thank yous and love yous to everyone involved in that side of things. The decor in The Victory was excellent- especially the larger-than-life-size posters of me, Alice and Cheryl! I later found mine ripped up, screwed up and covered in beer <sad face>. The after-party I went to/was thrown for me was suitably debauched. I spent most of it wearing a crown and behaving badly. Standard. Actually I also tried to rescue my poster but it has since been thrown away. From all accounts it was as trashed as I was- crumpled and beer soaked. An accurate representation of me come Saturday. Check out my little image gallery of some pictures I stole from friends. You can see mine and Cheryl’s posters in the first pic ^_^

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***Pictures courtesy of Cheryl May & Geeta Gill***

Aerial photography from Japan during the earthquake/tsunami (including a whirlpool scarily close to the coast) – click [here] to go straight to the Boing Boing article

Frightening video of an entire town washing away in under 6 minutes beginning at street-level and finished from a higher perch – click [here] to see it on Gawker (I originally saw it on YouTube but can’t find the direct link anymore)

Sobering before-and-after Google Earth satellite images of Japanese towns badly affected – click [here] to see it over at ABC News

Poster Cause Project’s stunning aid contributions – click [here] to buy the poster used above and other awesome “pray for Japan” imagery.

***Image used from Poster Cause Project – 75% of profits from these prints go to support Doctors Without Borders earthquake and disaster relief efforts for Japan***

Some which are however were travelling by myself for the first time when I went to Berlin, went urban exploring and got chucked out of a mental asylum, worked at my first ever sexpo (Erotica) and made some awesome new friends. If I look back, all in all I guess it was a good year but I have much higher hopes for 2011! If NYE’s crazy adventure is *anything* to go by then I’m sure it will. Start as you mean to go on

Anyway, here’s my favourite pictures from the year. I was going to do my favourite pictures that I personally took but then I realised I’ve probably posted them over the year anyway and that these are photos you might not have seen. Anyway, it’s a wee bit self-indulgent but ermmm, I guess blogging is a little bit self-indulgent anyway though.

Here’s to 2011.

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Recently at the BAC (Battersea Arts Centre) they showed the entireity of Twin Peaks back to back. Now, I’m covering it for a magazine so I won’t go into it fully other than to say I was really rather unfortunately hit with godawful flu that weekend and it was full-on-intense anyway, like melt-your-guts-with-bottomless-coffee-whilst-staying-awake-for-days kinda intense PLUS being super-ill, PLUS it being the mind-bendingly weird world of Twin Peaks. Anyway, you can imagine. But, I did think you might all want to see my photos. I took a colleague’s Lomography Fish Eye with me and it was the first time I’ve ever used one. I can’t say I’m over the moon with the results but I guess I would give it another go at some point. Anyway, you can decide for yourself.

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Oh and someone sent this to me over Twitter and it’s just the most awesome thing ever so WATCH THIS NOW!

As those of you who follow me on Twitter will know, I recently went urbexing (urban exploring) with the beautiful Sasha Rose (NSFW linkage). We were inspired to go after I saw her on the set of Fang Bang – behind the scenes snaps [here] – and asked her where she’d shot the above picture. She said she’d shot it at an abandoned mental asylum  that she wanted to revisit. After seeing the rest of her snaps from the shoot I was pretty keen to go to. Although she went in winter and was wearing a wedding dress covered in blood. I wasn’t so down with that part. Well, not without a photographer anyhow! Have a look at her snaps below and you’ll see how amaze they are. Mildly NSFW with slight boobage.

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We went on a Saturday afternoon which was quite luckily a bit mild and decent exploring weather. I’d bought some disposable black & white Rollei cameras filled with Rollei Retro 400 film so we’d have different perspectives of the adventure as opposed to just mine.  After circling the fence, getting chased by an evil tiny dog belonging to some children and getting stared out by a field full of scary bulls, we eventually found a tree to climb over way way back from the main gates. We came onto the site by the old football pitch and wandered around the patients villas, looking through windows and taking snaps. Eventually we found a boarded up door that was coming slightly off so we managed to get in. The floor was totally warped in one room with chairs falling through the foundations. Another room was full of rusted beds that still had the original curtains for privacy. Another room was full of broken toilet cubicles, disabled baths and decaying shower wet-rooms.
After this we, er, got escorted off the premises by security. We will return! Anyhow check out the best of our snaps.

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***Images of Sasha courtesy of Elite/Bliss Photography***

***B&W images taken by myself, Sasha Rose and Jamie Tosh***

Ever since my Dad lent me The Fountainhead I’ve had this mini-fascination with skycrapers. Living in London, especially so close to the Square Mile, is pretty great for watching these behemoths rise. What it’s also great for is experiementing with my photography. So, without further ado, here’s is a little image gallery of my favourite pictures I’ve snapped recently of buildings and skyscrapers in London…

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And for those who like my non-smut scribblings, check out this article I wrote for Arthur & Albert Magazine about how much I proper love skyscrapers [here]. And for those who prefer my photography (hahahahahahaha) you can check my lomo profile [here].

This week I had the extreme pleasure of hanging out with the sexy Holly D and one of my fave girlies Sasha Rose on the set of our upcoming show Fang Bang by Swank Video. It’s a parody of Tru Blood set in London Fields. I am not even joking. How fucking brill is that? The script is actually hilarious with lines like “TASTE THE CUNT OF HEDONISM” peppering the dialogue.  Holly’s boy Loco was performing with them as was Erik-lookalike Merlin. Suffice to say I saw plentiful fellatio which was pretty ace. I even got to watch Sasha fire-dancing with her palm-torches in the middle of London Fields! Have a little looksee at my iPhone behind-the-scene NSFW snaps on the Television X website [here]
I took my Lomo Cosmic with me and did some on-set snaps but they came out kinda blurry as I had it on a long-exposure because I was indoors. It’s a shame actually. I do really like the final shot of Sasha fire-dancing as I double-exposed it and it looks like she’s dancing in the street and not in the park! But you wouldn’t notice that unless you knew that she only danced in the park.

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***All pictures taken by me, and big thanks to Swank Video and Television X for allowing me on-set***

So I’m going to start taking my lomo cameras out with me a lot more, including (if I can) to work shoots as well. I took my Cosmic to the Television X 15th birthday shoot that I blogged about [here] and [here] and thought you might like to see some of the results. I’ve added a few snaps by our photographer Sean Michael in as well so you can see the Lomo snaps Vs the professional snaps. Hopes you like. x

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You can see more of my Lomography on my Lomo profile [here]

***Some images courtesy of TelevisionX.com***

Remember how I said that June was epic and really busy and sorry for not writing as much blah blah blah? Well, part of the reason behind that was that I went to Berlin by myself for my birthday (I mention the fact I went by myself purely to explain why all the pictures are of buildings and sites and the few ones of me are Myspace-style-camera-held-out-botchjobs). The picture above was taken at the East Side Gallery on my Lomo Smena 8M with normal 35mm film and was taken by a lovely Swedish girl called Kiki (you can see her blogpost about her stay in Berlin here) and I love that it got double exposed.
The gallery below is my first ever attempt using slide film (Fujichrome colour reversal I think) and I wasn’t entirely sure if I liked it at first because I think the snaps that come out of my Smena 8M aren’t as nice as the ones I get from my Lomo Cosmic but the more I look at them the more I like them. Let me know what you think actually. My favourite is the one from inside the Holocaust Memorial because it’s saturated red and it looks really ominous. I won’t name where all the places are as it might be fun to guess if you’ve ever been to Berlin. Anyhow, enjoy.

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