Enough with all that serious news, it’s back to the red carpet and the London weather for me!  Tonight, I covered the arrivals at the Brit awards for my fourth consecutive year, I seem to remember.  Always the photographer, never the winner.  Tch!  You’d think those judges would want to at least give me a lifetime honour for my contributions to Northern prog rock/dance music!  No taste, I tells ya..  With stepladders over my shoulder and press card in hand ready for the lotto draw to decide our positions in the photographers pen, I headed out for my first shoot since returning from Israel.

Every year, AFP tries to get inside to shoot the show but every time our application is blocked.  The only real reason I can see for the PR company doing this is a lack of understanding about the size of AFP as the pictures from tonight will be used worldwide.  Baffling.

Anyhow, the draw took place and I was glad I lugged my 63 rung stepladder across London as fate decided to place me at the back.  If you have the pleasure of browsing the celebrity magazines, you’ll see that the main pictures that sell (aside from exclusive backstage stuff, usually shot by a photographer for whichever agency paid the most) are the straight shots.  As long as the picture has eye-line (eye contact) and is either a full length for women or a head-shot for chaps, you’ve got the shot.  As you can see from tonight.  Being third row and on top of a huge stepladder doesn’t always go hand in hand with eye-line.

Resigning myself to my situation, I shot pretty much all of the arrivals using the “catchflash” technique that I’ve talked about in previous blogs.  As you can imagine, this is a hit and miss affair, relying on catching the moment that the other photographers fire their flashguns to provide the light for my image.

The results can create pictures that I think are usually far more interesting.  Unfortunately, what I find interesting and what the papers will publish aren’t always the same as tomorrows tabloids will be overflowing with shots from the guys on the front row who got the eye and the full length.  Ah well.

The problems connected with working on top of stepladders are that firstly, you can’t edit and send your pictures very easily and secondly, you’re perched on a small area while trying to juggle your camera bodies and lenses.  Tonight, I was working with fellow catchflash devotee Ian Gavan and we both ended up on the magic combo of 300mm f2.8 for the headshots and 24-70mm f2.8 for the wides and full-lengths.

So that’s the Brits over for another year with no particular highlights but thankfully no rain to welcome me back into the fold.  Small blessings..