Pic From the Archives: Enslaved. Enslaved are a Norwegian progressive black metal band, and and i was sent out to Bergen to shoot them while the Hole In The Sky metal festival was on. I love the Scandinavian landscape and so got the band to drive us out to a location by the coast where drummer Cato regularly went fishing (he is a keen fisherman who regularly writes articles about the sport and presents fishing TV shows). There the volcanic rock, pools of water and massive sky provided the perfect backdrop for the band. To give a more dramatic result I had lights with a battery pack with me, in my wheely case which weighs about 30kg, in addition to my 17kg rucksack. Having hauled this about 3/4 of a mile over rough gravel tracks, carried it down steep hillsides and over streams, and finally opened it when we arrived at the location, i found that the bulbs in my flash heads had broken, always a risk when putting cases in the hold of a plane but actually a very rare occurrence, and so i had to shoot with natural light after all. At least i got a good workout that day.

Pic from the Archives: Behemoth. This was shot in Wrocław, Poland, in an old WW2 era factory where the band were shooting a video. Working around an existing video or tv shooting schedule is always a challenge, and once i was set up and ready i had to wait for a couple of hours, periodically readjusting my lighting to match the rapidly dropping light levels as the sun went down. I finally got my time with band with just enough light left to balance against my flash, ad shot a series of group shots and portraits around the fantastic crumbling architecture of the factory complex. Despite looking pretty terrifying the guys are extremely nice and i like them a lot.

They also don't take themselves too seriously.

Pic From the Archives: Boris. Boris are a japanese experimental rock band, with heavy elements of psychedelia in their sound, so it made sense to me bring that element into my images of them. I called ace illustrator Stephen Collins to get him on board, and then photographed the band in 'swirly' body shapes, shooting with exaggerated perspective and getting them to imagine the undulating tentacles of an octopus, before picking the best poses, arranging them into a composition and sending the 3 shot off to Steve. He then did an incredible job turning my vague brief into a psychedelic mind trip, and the final stage was then to over-retouch their faces to make them fit into the smooth vector illustration world.

Pic from the archives: Marchlands. This TV show was set across 3 generations of people who lived in the same house, in the 60's, the 80's and the present day. The challenge was to represent this visually, so we did three shoots at different points in the filming, when the house ws dressed for the 3 different periods. Each time i had to set up the camera to shoot from the exact same position, and light it so that the different parts would blend together, then we would shoot the relevant cast in situ. Once i'd blended the 3 periods together, we had a cross generational portrait of the same room across three different time periods.

Pic From The Archives: Sam Carter, Architects. This Shot of Sam, the singer of UK metal band Architects, was sadly never used, being deemed 'too scary' by the magazine it was shot for, but i love it. Glowing hot coals in a fire were shot and the cracks and texture built up on top of Sam's face to give the feel that he was actually glowing from a fire inside. Shots of flames were then built up to make the hair. The biggest challenge was getting the balance between his real face, and him being recognisable, and the firey nature of the image, but i think it worked out pretty well.

Pic from the archives: London Rollergirls - Smack To The Future. I've done a lot of posters for the London Rollergirls over the years, this bout had the typically puntastic name Smack To the Future, and so it was clear that i had to do a rollerskating version of the classic film poster, complete with flaming wheels. One thing i did realise though, was that the original poster makes NO SENSE anatomically. The flames, the car, Marty's leg, there's no correlation between them at all!

Pic from the archives: Angela Gossow from Arch Enemy. I had to fly into Copenhagen airport (in Denmark) and then get a train to Halmsted (in Sweden) for the shoot. I didn't really look at all the flight details that closely beforehand and have a slightly shaky grasp of European geography, so i spent the entire trip not knowing for sure which country i was in, only what city. The band were great and Angela was lovely, she used to work in advertising and marketing so she totally gets the image side of the music business, and the whole band all liked the final images.