It’s no secret that I love playing with matches! This is a shot I did at the end of last year with the band Akercocke. I had spent the previous evening testing different flammable liquids in the garden when Chris my assistant happened to mention that he had some fire chains. I wish I’d spoken to him sooner because I lost most of my body hair the previous night testing everything from lighter fluid to hairspray and deodorants.

The shoot with Akercocke was at Epsom Downs - I think we put off any potential ‘Doggers’ that night.

Did you know Sure deodorant is like Napalm?

Chris really should forget this photography lark and join the circus!

I have so many shots that I am just dying to get pasted up here - but I can’t! Due to magazine rivalry I have to keep things under wraps for the moment!

I have the best cover I have ever shot due out soon ( in my opinion anyway!). As soon as its on the news stands I’ll get it posted up here with some behind the scenes info!

I am still stupid busy at the moment with plenty going on. The ‘Bullet for my Valentine’ tour started well.
How lush is their tour bus?

Have a shoot with Fightstar at the end of the week that I am looking forward to. Just found out they are fellow fans of the Deftones so the music in the studio should be bearable.

Talking of the studio I had to stick up the shots below from the Darkness session. Brad from Total Guitar really was blowing smoke rings up Justin’s arse - well until Justin called us cheapskates for not hiring a smoke machine - He had apoint!

I think Brad used a Henry Wintermans for the effect below.

Following the smoke shots it all went a little hazy. Dan Hawkins decided the tree in the foyer would look better in the shots,

Justin disapeared and came back with a broom, Richie the new bass player gets a tree in the face.

Dan and Richie decide the one and only Gibson Les Paul we have (we were supposed to have 3!) would look better in the pot.

This is all playing out to ‘Trampled under foot’ - Led Zeppelin.

Dan looks kind of serious - I had given up at this point!

Phill and Brad from TG join in on the chaos.

I totally give up and tell everyone to ‘F**k off’ (true story). I think we are safe to say the shots above will never be published anywhere! All in all a perfect shoot.

The new Hammer came out today with the Machinehead shots that I did in NY on the cover! It looks OK but I am still unhappy with the way my digital stuff is looking once published. I have decided to spend some more money on processing power and Colour calibration at JMc headquarters and see if I can get this bastard to improve. Heard yesterday that Nikon have officially discontinued (bar the F6) all film cameras! Gulp…no going back then! I still can’t see how they can do this when they haven’t replaced the film camera like for like!!?? The D2X is OK but it has a 1.5x magnification on the normal (don’t know what is normal anymore?) focal length and the viewfinder is 1/4 smaller than traditional 35mm. I am determined to get things looking better than just OK - I guess like anything new it will take time! Metal Hammer cover below and as promised the Greenday B&W is back on eBay again and a limited edition run of Him prints are now on-line!

The cover below won the Future publishing’s 2005 ‘highly commended cover of the year’ - Which I am delighted about! Other 2005 Future awards were presented to Hammer for the Avenged Sevenfold cover (December 2005) and Total Guitars summit front cover (August 2005).

‘highly commended cover of the year’

‘Best cover December 2005′

The Total Guitar summit front cover was actually put together from 5 individual shoots backstage at ‘Download 2005′. Originally Toni Iommi was supposed to be standing at the back with Slash but Toni was too busy on the day. So we had to jig everything around to make it work. To keep everything in place we pasted polaroids together as we shot to make sure it would all fit. Thankfully I shot Scotty Ian standing up as well so we made the cover work in the end - but only just!

‘Best Cover August 2005′

Happy New Year to everyone who reads this blog!

Had an awesome time in Cornwall for New Years and Christmas was pretty damn good too!

I received an email from one grumpy individual asking why I didn’t update my blog every day like some other photographers!!?

Welll…
this isn’t a diary or a running comentary of my life in the way some other snappers like to do it. For me this is all about the pictures that I take in my life. Sometimes they may be personal and other times they will be related to my professional work. I seriously don’t have time to write a day by day account of what I get up to and even if I did, I don’t want to share it with every Tom, Dick or Sally.

However…
I will update the blog as often as possible. If I have News and when I have shots that I want to share I’ll post them up as soon as I can. Please leave you comments so I know someone appreciates this site?

That all said this year promises to be a great one and you never know my main site may get finished as well. I hope it is a great one for you too! Best wishes and check back soon. JOHN Mc…x

Just to prove I am working this year here are some shots I did earlier using fishing wire and some sticky back plastic!

The Darkness - shot on January 5th 2006

Off on tour with my Welsh buddies in BFMV and then off to ***** with some **** rockers that I can’t tell you about. Pix on-line soon!