Dan le sac vs. Scroobius Pip shot to fame last year with their track Thou Shalt Always Kill, receiving NME praise despite denouncing it along with the Smiths and Nirvana mid song. They aren’t your average Barfly indie visitors, their first song dealt with why you shouldn’t slash your wrists. Why? It’s harsh on your sister. Their on stage furniture; including a TV and reading desk add to the feeling this isn’t just a group, but a statement. All this done in good humour with eyes half open and bottle of wine in hand of course.

Dan le Sac speaking his mind

The crowd knew exactly what to expect and couldn’t have been happier to indulge a 6 foot bearded man preaching to them about the darker points of life, electronic samples pumping out in the background. The tiny stage of Barfly was host to a TV broadcast from the reading desk, shown on the television whilst the show continued, both members taking breaks to relax in the armchair when it all got a bit too much to handle. A different take on UK hip-hop if that’s what it is, less guns and bitches, more home truths; a refreshing change! Their debut album Angles is out on May 12^th.

Scroobius Pip tuning in the TV

Photos and review from the Cardiff Barfly on 24th April 2008. More pictures below:

This article also appeared in Quench magazine, my first published review! First of many? Only time will tell…

IMG has been a long running tradition for Cardiff university students, each year teams from Cardiff University compete in netball and football. This year an event was organised to celebrate their achievements at a ceremony. I was asked to go along and photograph the winners and the event setup.

The football winners

Netball winners

Pre-arrival of guests in Solus

There are many more images below please click a thumbnail image to view bigger. If you attended the ceremony and would like a get hold of prints please contact me or leave a comment in the post.

A bit thanks goes out to Dave Green for assisting me on this at such short notice, legend.

The Cardiff university societies Act one and LMS (Live Music Society) put on a charity event on Monday to try and raise £600 for Cancer Research. The winners of this years battle of the bands, Zenyth played an acoustic set and who will also be playing at the Cardiff Summer Ball.

It was the first time the guys had played acoustically live apparently, but they seemed to do a good job. I will be looking forward to seeing them play in Coopers field in the summer.

I also have a photo shoot coming up to promote the ball, more details soon, it should be fun! I will also be taking photos at the IMG awards ball tonight (Wednesday 30th April).

Alongside taking photos of the Rugby action I thought I would also put up some other photos of the Varsity action which went on.

There are also photos of the Varsity Rugby match itself here.

The Cardiff snake charmers put on a good show, and there were hundreds of them!!

The Cardiff crowd was massive and loud. The biggest cheers of the night were given to the numerous streakers.

Cardiff celebrating a well deserved victory, lets hope they continue with the success into the future!

I had been looking forward to taking this shot, finally getting to put the fisheye to use on something other than BMX and skating… I have handed my dissertation in finally, so expect updates to be a little more regular.

There are more photos below, click on a thumbnail to see the rest of the gallery.

Cardiff Arms Park held host once again to the annual Cardiff versus Swansea rugby Varsity match. Cardiff had been thrashed 19-0 the previous year so there was a lot riding on them doing well this year. The match initially did not start well for Cardiff with Swansea looking to be the stronger side.

Cardiff soon found their form though and took the lead.

Some stunning penalties ensured that Cardiff stayed in the lead. The crowd turn out for Cardiff was massive!

Swansea put a great fight but Cardiff continued to dominate.

The end score was 19-9 to Cardiff, crowning them Varsity the Varsity winners. Cardiff also won overall in the others sports winning 17 games, drawing 1 and losing just two!

The pitch was invaded by celebrating Cardiff fans at the end… The score was up on the screen for all to see!

Sony have become quite well known for their style of advertising for their digital camera and video equipment. The advertisement that really caught my initially was the paint explosions, their latest video continues on a similar very large scale premise of “lets see what happens if we take a cool idea and make it huge!”

Their latest advert doesn’t quite live up to the previous ones in my opinion, but is still a lot of fun and just goes to show what you can do with an idea and big budget… Not quite sure what the advert is supposed to say about their new cameras though, that they are foam proof?!

This is an interesting making of video. Seven and a half minutes to make all that foam, insane! I just hope the extras got to have a foam party in it afterwards and it didn’t all go to waste.

Maybe foam machines will become the next big thing in the world of Strobist and replace the in-famous smoke machine?

A quick portrait session with illustrator Tinhed. Also going to be doing a website with him soon, go see Foals for some of his drawings. Expect big things to be coming from his way soon.

Tunnel vision at the moment… Big project is finished a week Thursday, it will be a big relief to get that out the way and I can enjoy some of the beautiful weather that is slowly creeping round the UK.