Earlier today I tweeted an unseen shot of Duran Duran’s John Taylor that I took three years ago at his house in England. The response to the shot has been pretty amazing, mainly because Duran Duran themselves retweeted the photo - thus bringing it to a wider audience.

I will do a proper Duran Duran related post in the not so distant future as I have a lot of photos of the band that have not been posted anywhere, but for this blog post I wanted to share my favourite photos from the shoot I did with John.

It was around the beginning of January 2010 that I contacted John about taking part in my For The Record project. In a nutshell, the idea was to photograph musicians with their favourite albums - and John picked the following records for his shoot: Four Tops ‘First Album’, David Bowie ‘Young Americans’,  and Chic ‘Risqué’. I wrote an article about the shoot and the For The Record project for Photo Pro Magazine in the UK, and you can now download a PDF of the article (make sure you right/control click on the link and save the file to your computer).

My favourite photos from the shoot are posted below - you can also see large versions of the shots on my website: http://www.front-rows-pits-and-pavements.com/images/johntaylor/

When you enter the world of professional photography one of your goals is to get your photos seen by as many people as possible. It’s one thing taking a photograph, it’s another thing seeing it gathering virtual dust on your hard drive. That’s why I’ve decided to write a quick tumblr post about my recent live shoot with Queen at London’s Apollo.

I uploaded this gallery to my website yesterday and within the space of 24 hours the gallery link has been shared and retweeted on Twitter an astonishing 70 times. I don’t think I have ever had a more positive response to one of my galleries so this is a massive THANK YOU to all the Queen and Adam Lambert fans who have shared the link with their friends. I’d personally thank each and every one of you but I think my Twitter followers would get annoyed with me.

The Queen shoot was interesting in many ways, and it was in fact a shoot I thought I wouldn’t be able to make as I had been given an usually early start time of 8pm by the band’s publicist. I had been on a shoot in the afternoon before the show and only finished there at 7.15pm. I was sure I wouldn’t have enough time to get to the venue, collect my photo pass and get into the pit in time for the start of the show, and even though I was seriously considering just going home, I decided to try my luck and head to the venue…

I arrived at the Apollo at exactly 8.01pm, collected my pass and ran to the pit area in front of the stage. Well, I needn’t have worried because Queen didn’t kick off their show until about 8.30pm and I can’t tell you how grateful I was for the late start (for once). 

Below are some of my favourite images from the shoot but you can see the full gallery on my website: http://www.front-rows-pits-and-pavements.com/images/queen

Earlier this month I was one of the official photographers at Capital Radio’s annual Summertime Ball which was held at Wembley Stadium in London. I was one of two photographers shooting directly on stage - which tends to be a good spot for getting interesting shots. 

A few days after the show, I was told that Pitbull (one of the acts I photographed on the day) had posted one of my shots that had appeared on Capital Radio’s official website on his Facebook page, and within a few hours I suddenly started receiving tweets from his fans asking me to post more photos from his Summertime Ball appearance.

I’m happy to report I have now uploaded a gallery of shots to my website. To see the photos check out the following link: http://www.front-rows-pits-and-pavements.com/images/pitbull/

In May I was commissioned to shoot a 5-page cover feature with Newton Faulkner. It dawned on me a few days before the shoot that while I had been commissioned for countless magazine features, and also had some of my photos appear on the covers of tour books, CD albums and magazines - I had never been specifically commissioned for a cover feature. It’s a very different ball game when you know one of your photos will definitely make the cover - unless you screw up and don’t get any decent shots, that is.

The shoot itself took place at the Leadmill in Sheffield where Newton would perform later that same evening, and since I was pretty unfamiliar with the venue (I’d last shot the Ting Tings there in 2008), I could only work out what shots to get once I got there. Once I’d set up my lights for the shoot I began looking for suitable and interesting shooting locations inside and around the venue.

I suppose I work pretty well under pressure and was able to come up with a number of ideas for both the cover and the actual feature.  Below is a preview of the cover and the main shot along with a couple of shots that were also printed. 

Last week Coldplay played the first of three shows at London’s Emirates Stadium. I had previously shot the band at the O2 Arena on their current world tour and was keen to shoot them again as their show is a visual feast for every music photographer. 

Chris Martin and his band mates did not disappoint, and within 10 minutes of the guys hitting the stage, it was raining confetti from every possible angle which made for some rather lovely photographs. 

You can now see the full gallery of my photos on my website: http://www.front-rows-pits-and-pavements.com/images/coldplay2012/

Given her current status as one of the biggest pop stars in the world it’s hard to believe that Lady Gaga burst onto the scene just over three years ago.

I first shot Lady GaGa in January 2008 when she played a small club in London and again a few weeks later in Manchester on her first nationwide tour of the UK on which she supported NE-YO and the Pussycat Dolls.

Since then I’ve had the pleasure of photographing her several times and her live show is always a joy to capture on camera.

Even though her very first production was rather small and somewhat low key, you could already tell that the visual aspect of Lady Gaga’s performance was incredibly important to her. However, I don’t think anyone could have predicted just how much it would evolve over the next few years. 

You can check out my Lady GaGa photo gallery on my website: http://www.front-rows-pits-and-pavements.com/images/ladygaga/

I have shot the Scissor Sisters quite a few times over the past five years, so when they announced they were playing two shows at London’s Shepherds Bush Empire I made sure I applied for a photo pass for the gig.

Known for their extravagant stage outfits, Jake, Ana and co did what they do best when they hit the stage on Thursday night. 

I was lucky to shoot the second one of the two shows as Jake’s stage outfit was a lot more, er, eye catching than the one her wore the previous night which made for more interesting photos than usual.

You can check out the full photo gallery on my site: http://www.front-rows-pits-and-pavements.com/images/scissorsisters2012

OK, it’s time to rewind to January and post some unseen photos of Howler taken at their London show at XOYO. I had arranged to take some group shots of the guys before the gig and am pleased to say they gave me a variety of poses during the brief shoot. 

The live shoot went well too - it wasn’t necessarily ‘fun’ due to the mental crowd, but it’s usually the more chaotic gigs that make for much more interesting photos.

You can check out the full gallery on my site: http://front-rows-pits-and-pavements.com/images/howler/