I've been wholly abysmal at updating my deviantART account over the past year and a half, but in that time a lot of things have happened...


• I virtually stopped my photography, mainly through apathy

• My band Mandala spent a year working on our seminal album Eventyr: including concert harp, string section, pedal-steel guitar, electronics, choirs... etc.

• MySpace (...need I say more)

• I got back into photography in a big way, and started to take photos of my friends playing the London gig scene whenever I could

• I signed up for a Flickr account as I wanted a bigger gallery and was frustrated with the hoops you have to jump through for each devART submission - hence my gig photography went there

• Mandala, after being together on and off since 1997, split permanently, throwing the past years work into limbo


The result of this past year's flux is that I'm now looking to take my photography a lot more seriously. I really want to branch out of doing solely gig photography (which I still really enjoy), and head into portraiture.

I'm looking to start doing studio setups, and playing with light in a much more controlled way. Also, being a graphic designer, I'm a dab-hand in the ol' p'shop, so I'm going to start to introduce post-processing more into shoots, ideally at a conceptual stage - aiming for photorealistic end results, not photoshop-overlay-mess.

So in summary - I've a few specific projects with models lined up, and the aim is definitely to regain a focus on the artistic and expressive sides of photography, and of course, to have some fun in the process...

Now I just need to produce something worthwhile!


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My band have released not one ...but TWO EPs!

Listening to: An Echo of You - Mandala
Reading: Interview with the Vampire - Anne Rice
Watching: Final Cut (1997 Jude Law film)

Mandala have just released "Before Memory" and "The Tears of a Thousand Angels": sister EPs that contain our best recordings to date. We've been together for over seven years so something must be right by now!

More info can be found on my band's news page. They are for sale at a mere £5 each or just £8 for the pair.

We played at the Bedford in Balham (in South London - a fantastic venue) last night to launch the EPs. Our violinist couldn't make the gig, but luckily we had a stand-in. Anna was just fantastic, she picked up her parts in a single backstage run-through and went on to play an intense set. There are videos of a few songs which we hope to get onto the site soon.

Elliot was on hand to do our live photography, and I took along a light and set up a makeshift photo-studio in the green room.

My shots are slowly becoming a press shot for the band, the progress of which can be seen here and then a little more refined here.

The resolution is intense, the shots I've submitted to dA are only around 25% actual size!

withinMandala.com

I've re-launched my site.... I only missed the CSS Reboot by a little bit

Its blog will replace my Blogger account. Comments are very welcome.

Some generic bits about me...

Listening to: Spoken - Mandala (beauty; ...sigh)
Reading: iCon: Steve Jobs, The Greatest Second Act...
Watching: Closer (saw in the cinema and now awaiting DVD)

Mandala ...the band in which I play bass guitar and on occasion laptop.

JM Enternational ...where I spend each weekday refining pixels and dot-screens.

Some random thoughts ...a sporadic and infrequent blog, about that which interests me: technology, music, design, photography....

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