I’m back home for Christmas in Lowestoft, which is the most easterly place in Great Britain. It’s not the most amazing place on Earth – it produced The Darkness, for goodness’ sake – and was described in unflattering terms by Gene Simmons during the second series of Rock School. It is, however, by the seaside, and that’s always good, right?

The worst thing about being home this Christmas is that my mother decided to downsize while I was at uni, which means I am left sleeping on a sofa for a week. (I’m not complaining. Too much.) This means I can’t really sleep, and when she’s up for work early, I wake up too.

All of this adds up, basically, to an early morning walk to the beach – the new BBC Weather site helpfully told me that sunrise would be as late as 8.02am, which meant I could laze in bed (on the sofa) until 7am.

It’s not the prettiest coastline, but there is some interesting stuff around that made for some interesting shots (I hope). Of course, jumping down from the seawall onto a narrow stretch of pebbles and sand while the tide was coming in to shoot it wasn’t my brightest idea, but I blame the early start and lack of tea. Anyway, you can see the rest of the set on flickr.

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Luck plays a great part in life, and especially when you decide to head out on a particular date in the future with a model. You might already know exactly where: which street, which tree, which fountain or wall. But nothing ever quite works out as planned – thankfully.

I firmly believe the best photographs aren’t planned. Who wants a sterile, thought-out image, when you can have a well-composed but unique photograph? The trick is merely to react well to the changing surroundings. On a recent shoot in Soho, not only did we manage to grab the use of a bit of staging from the Astoria thanks to a very helpful backstage guy, but also managed to get a good shot of a couple of policemen passing in the background.

We could have said nothing to the bloke shoving staging out the back door, and not got some interesting shots with it. We could have waited for the policemen to pass by, out of shot, before continuing, because these things didn’t fit with the plan we’d already discussed. But why? That’s just boring.

The worst thing you can do when shooting on location is to stick to a plan. Plans are great – but only when flexible enough for you to scrap it entirely and react to a new lighting situation you didn’t spot when scouting the location, a different kind of car parked just round the corner.

I’ve been out shooting in Soho today – and I must say, it’s a great location. We didn’t even venture far either side of the Charing Cross Road – just an alleyway either side – but the nooks and crannies you can come across are great.

Even just the walls are full of interesting bits and pieces – broken lights, rusted pipes, boarded-up windows and painted signs. Light filters down these narrow streets really well, and where you have bits of building built over the top of them, the tunnels let you play around with sillhouettes really nicely.
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