Every year just seems to outdo itself when it comes to NASS, and this year was no different.

Crazy riding, crazy nights, and crazy good gestures…. Sometimes you need a video half an hour long to try get someone to experience how great a weekend was for a small group of friends running a clothing label, and even then that is never enough.

Here is some highlights from the BMX side of NASS.

DISCLAIMER: Parental Advisory – Contains Mild Nudity.

At the weekend, I shot some photo’s for a Burlesque show put on by Kristyl Rose.

This took place in Sanctuary, Basingstoke. I had never shot a Burlesque show before, or even watched one, so I wasn’t really sure what to expect.

I immediately hit, probably the worst, problem for a photographer – extreme low light. The lighting in Sanctuary is shocking if you’re taking photo’s, it always has been and I have come into this problem before, but never for a client. I ended up placing my LED light at the side of the stage to give some extra light, and I relied solely on my 35mm f/1.4 purely because of the low aperture. When using the 35mm, I immediately hit another problem…. not much space to move about the stage area at all, so 35mm on a crop sensor gives very limited range.

All that said, I did what I could and it seems everyone was happy with the results, which I’m happy about because I hate using an ISO above 1600, and I shot most of the pictures in 1600/2500 so the noise wasn’t great when editing them. I also had to shoot in around 1/80-1/100, which, FYI, I don’t recommend when shooting dancers, as the move around a fair bit….

Either way, I’ve put together a couple of edits to post here, on my newly “design-revamped” website.

I’ve also just invested in a couple new lenses and a Lightning to SD Card reader, so hopefully I will be able to update the website more than about once a year as it seems I’m doing currently.

Watch this space…

Last weekend, I head to Dismaland after getting tickets from a very Dismal and uncooperative website.

Banksy is pretty well known for shutting exhibitions down with the sheer volume of people wanting to see his new work, and wether his identity is still a mystery or not, his marketing team is extremely good at only letting you know what they want and when they want.

His last exhibition in London was free and there was queue’s left right and centre for it, so it was always known that Dismaland was gonna be a hit. When they released the fact that there would be tickets for only £3 I saw mixed emotions, some people said it was a money making scheme, but most were stoked at such a low price to see artwork from over 50 different artists – I was one of those people. So when tickets finally came on sale I snapped them up and head down on the first weekend that it was open to more than just the residents of surrounding areas. As it was only open for 5 weeks, taking the 4 hour round trip could realistically only be done on a weekend.

The experience itself was pretty surreal, the staff there were such a huge input to the experience and the composition of the whole place was incredible. Not to mention the artwork and the very strong messages put across by most of it. The artwork varied massively from paintings, props, pictures, creations, all the way to giant sculptures and just the fact that the Dismaland itself and experience within was basically a work of art in itself.

Banksy couldn’t have chosen a better location either, even when you “exit through the giftshop” back to ‘reality’ and walk along the beach, it doesn’t 100% feel like you’ve actually left. With stalls charging £2 for a game that would be impossible to win such a terrible prize, to donkeys pulling around a giant Thomas the Tank Engine cart. Weston Super Mare definitely has character to say the least.

I strongly urge anyone to head down to Dismaland, at least just for the experience. I also highly recommend getting tickets in advance off the website (they release tickets 7 days at a time, which quickly sell out) as when we went down, the Walk-In que was shut by 1.30pm…

If you don’t get to go down there, the coverage it has got is world wide, so I’m sure you’ll be able to find pictures or videos of the entire park. It’s not quite as amazing as experiencing it first hand, but here are a few of the pictures that I grabbed when I was there. All pictures I took that day can be viewed here.

This year saw the first VW show in Basingstoke (our home town) and theLAB were asked to sponsor the event, which we were more than happy to do.

It was a great day and probably one of the best VW Shows I’ve been to, maybe because I knew most the people that were there, maybe because it took me 5 mins to drive home, but either way the atmosphere was great and the range of cars was pretty impressive too. You could really tell some time and effort went into a lot of the cars that were there.

The whole event was to raise money for Naomi House & Jacksplace Charity – naomihouse.org.uk.
theLAB made a LTD Edition T-Shirt for the event in which half the money went to charity; which sold out so fast that we had to take special orders for some people to get them printed especially so we could raise as much as possible for such a good cause.

Naturally, I made an edit, because that’s what I do, and as it was my 3rd edit in the space of about a month and a half, after having nearly a year without filming anything. So I think I’ve stared through a viewfinder and at a computer screen enough for a while now. So enjoy this one; or else.

The weekend before Boardmasters this year, I got a phone call from Lil Man asking if I wanted to go down to Newquay to film the Pro Finals. I agreed to it, but as it got closer I realised that it would mean waking up at 3.30am on a Sunday to drive 210 miles, film a 3 hour contest, then drive back in traffic…. and also as it got closer, the weather decided to turn slowly…

Nevertheless, I still took the trip down (fuelled by Monster) with Lil Man after about 4 hours sleep and ended up getting home that night about 9pm. So I was pretty tired to say the least.

But after a 17.5 hour day, I saw some incredible riding, caught up with a load of people that I only really see at NASS or Boardmasters and I filmed a few clips, which I’ve handily put together into this edit.