Steve Gerrard's Diary

Professional Photographer

The May issue of Professional Photographer arrived on the doorstep earlier than expected and features a 4-page "Day In The Life" article written by myself and featuring photos of Bloc Party, The Twang and the kids' fashion shoot for Cloud 9. The images look great and, although they couldn't resist calling me Steven Gerrard at least once, the article reads well so I'm pretty chuffed. It's a great issue actually and features lots about music photography. It has one of Karen McBride's Liam Gallagher pictures on the cover.
On top of that, but maybe not quite so high profile, our local paper ran an article about our business but managed to make me look like some kind of alien in the photograph. Ahhh well... it's all free publicity.

Since returning from another inspiring couple of days in the Lakes things have been none stop as always. I managed to add a few new images to the Steve Gerrard Photography site as I thought it needed updating a bit. I also came across this article online which was a pleasant surprise. The writer seems to have done his homework and then some!

After hurtling down the M6 from the Lakes I got to Nottingham in time to witness the embarrassingly bad Annihilator supporting Trivium at Rock City. It was comedy metal at its worst but the crowd seemed to love them. I was just annoyed I got there too late to witness the mighty Gojira. Trivium were ok but after getting the shots I needed I headed home.

Later in the week I was back in Nottingham to meet up with Bayside for a shoot for Rock Sound. They were nice guys and we got the shots in no time using a graffiti backdrop right by the venue.

I also shot the gig later and had free reign as I was the only photographer and was allowed to shoot the whole set.

The next night I did Arctic Monkeys in Birmingham which was much less enjoyable thanks to a lighting man who must have been paid to make sure we never got any decent shots! Gits! And last night at 30 seconds To Mars was even worse. After waiting an age for Jared Leto and friends to get on the stage, we were granted 2 songs to get the shots and the lighting was even worse than for Arctic Monkeys! Grrrr! Still, managed to get one or two decent ones...

We did the viewing with the family who won the photo shoot on Sunday. They seemed to love the images and struggled to pick just one for their framed image. They ended up choosing this one:

Often I update this Blog on my laptop but when we arrived home after Jane's wedding in Brighton we were greeted by the site of our bedroom having been turned upside down by burglers who had helped themselves to our laptop, flatscreen TV, iPod and a little camera. They even emptied my shoulder bag and took that to help carry the stuff. The bag had my DJ headphones in so they thought they'd take those too. Lowlife little bastards. I hope the karma police get them, cos I doubt the real police will bother!

Still, Jane's wedding was great fun and it was good to see some old faces. I got a great shot of the happy couple which I'm gonna send them as a large print..

The Arcadian kicks  asked me to shoot their Bar Academy gig for them, so I popped down to that and sent them over 30 images today. Here's one of my faves..

They're a pretty decent band too with a great lead singer who's quite easy on the eye and a guitarist who plays with real passion. One to watch out for..

Easter Sunday saw Evelyne and I spend the day in sunny Leamington Spa photographing a family who had won a portrait shoot on a website. The weather was glorious and it was a nice treat to spend a few hours in the park playing with the kids, eating ice cream and taking our time to get some great images for the family. The prize also includes a framed 8x10 so we'll meet up with them again next week to see which images they like most. Hopefully they'll buy at least one extra print too.

The fashion shoot I did at the casino on March 28th resulted in some great images I'm glad to say and the magazine described them as "beautiful", which was a relief! I was somewhat out of my depth but it seems I got away with it. Must get my studio lighting skills up to scratch..

Fake it til you make it..