I’m so grateful that I get to do something I’m passionate about as a career and last year was our best year yet. So many amazing moments!

It’s all about the people we meet along the way though and I can’t thank those people enough.

My wife, Evelyne…. There’s no way to sum up how much I love her and how important she is to me. She’s the best!

My boys, Elliott, Isaac & Jonas. They’ve taken over our lives and make us laugh out loud every day. I couldn’t love them more.

Our clients. I can’t believe what amazing clients we continue to book. They’re all so welcoming and we never take for granted the privilege of being allowed into their lives and to witness their most important moments. We have made a lot of great new friends this year.

Add to that the wedding bloggers, magazines, bands, workshop attendees, companies that help us out with shoots, other photographers…. the list goes on.

Thank you. Here’s to an amazing 2012.

So, here are some of my favourite images from 2011. It’s a varied collection. I had too many for one post though so here is Part 1…. Part 2 will follow tomorrow… Enjoy!

This weekend the world lost a true talent.

I can’t say I was a massive fan of her music. I did like it though and always knew Amy Winehouse was a gifted and unique singer.

Her music isn’t going anywhere though. Her talent lives on in her songs.

These photos were taken three years ago. I’m glad I got to photograph her and hear her voice live.

Rest in peace now, Amy.

So after years of shooting some of the coolest bands on the planet, it’s come to this….

Haha. But seriously, when some people heard I was going to be photographing Justin Bieber they thought I was mad. But I have nothing against him and, being one of the world’s biggest pop stars, I was interested to see what kind of show he put on and to photograph a gig which is completely opposite to what I’d normally shoot.

I only stayed for the first 3 songs but I have to say, the stage show was mightily impressive and the boy can dance! I’m fairly sure he was lip-synching, at least while I was there, and obviously the music is just throwaway cheese aimed at young kids, but the world will always need teen popstars and Justin does what he does better than most.

Justin turned 17 this week and already has almost 8 million Twitter followers!

I promise to have some more credible bands on the blog very shortly…

To purchase prints of these Justin Bieber photos CLICK HERE

Last night I popped in to Birmingham’s Glee Club to photograph the fantastic Ani DiFranco.

In the days before the gig I’d mentioned to a few people that I was going and I was surprised how many people had never heard of her. For a Grammy Award-winner who has released 20+ albums and is described as a “feminist icon”, I thought she was more famous.

The gig was great but I was very restricted from a photography point of view, only being able to shoot from one side of the stage in a packed out room. I like the images I got but would have liked a little more variety.

Bullet For My Valentine are pretty much the only newish UK metal band who can play arenas. Am I wrong? And for that, they have my respect, although I’m not really a fan of their music.

I shot Bullet’s Birmingham gig last week for Rock Sound magazine. I’d heard big things about the stage show and pyrotechnics and what we got was a British metal band declaring themselves more than worthy of such a large venue.

Yesterday I was asked to shoot the Manic Street Preachers for Birmingham’s Express & Star newspaper.

I’m not a massive fan of the band but they do have some good songs and the lighting was way better than I expected so I’m pretty pleased with the images I brought home. This first one of Nicky Wire will be going into my live music portfolio.

Thanks to Jason Sheldon for sorting the pass for me.

So you thought I just photographed scary, bearded rock dudes eh?

If I have any credibility at all, I’m seriously risking all that with this post but I could not care less. On Saturday night I was asked to photograph a total cheesy popfest at Birmingham’s LG Arena and I have to admit I thoroughly enjoyed it. Not the music, that’s for sure – almost all of it was throw-away rubbish – but it was fun shooting household names and, for me, something quite different from what I normally photograph. Plus, I can’t say photographing The Saturdays was exactly a chore!

The event was for local radio station BRMB and featured several big pop names, as well as X-Factor finalists and the slightly more credible headliners, The Script.

None of the acts were on for longer than 20 minutes. Some only performed two songs. Thankfully!

So, here are a few of my faves from my Saturday night popfest…

Mark Ronson played a DJ set…

McFly

Alexandra Burke

Teenage girls’ favourites, The Wanted

Tinchy Stryder

Shayne Ward

Example

Olly Murs

The Hoosiers

James Blunt

Joe McElderry (wearing more make-up than The Saturdays!)

Diana Vickers

The Saturdays

And… finally… The Script

Fun was had. But I listened to The Chariot on the car journey home just to balance it all out

If you’d like to buy prints of any of these images, please CLICK HERE

Those of you that follow me on Twitter and Facebook might know that yesterday was a little traumatic!

We were woken to find out that we’d been burgled at home while we were sleeping. Our Apple laptops were gone.

The same day I was due to present my first ever seminar on Music Photography. My whole presentation, slideshows and notes were on one of the stolen laptops!

It was obviously upsetting for both myself and Evelyne but it could have been worse. We didn’t lose anything we can’t replace. The kids weren’t disturbed by the intruders. And nobody was hurt. And we can still live lives that aren’t so miserable that we have to go out in the middle of the night and steal from innocent people!

In the end the seminar went fine, just not as expected. And on the evening I went out to shoot two death metal bands. The music suited my mood well

Here are just a few pics of Job For A Cowboy and the immense Whitechapel…

Halloween always brings the freaks out and it was good to see many of the 2000 people who showed up for this year’s Never Say Die Tour in Birmingham had dressed up for the occasion.

The gig, at Birmingham Academy, featured SEVEN bands for just £16. That’s just over £2 per band. Good value indeed. Especially when the bill was as good as this…

Headliners were Australia’s mighty Parkway Drive, a band who have released one of my albums of the year in Deep Blue. Support came from the legendary Comeback Kid along with Bleeding Through, Emmure, Your Demise, War From A Harlots Mouth (their new album, which I’m listening to as I type this, is immense!) and We Came As Romans (who I missed due to them coming on stage before 6pm!).

My fave bands of the night were Parkway Drive and War From A Harlots Mouth but I was blown away by Emmure too. A very good night of extreme music.

I think I have a little crush on KT Tunstall. Sorry Evelyne.

Last night she played in Wolverhampton at the Wulfrun Hall and she was fantastic as ever. Funny, smiley and entertaining as well as playing and singing brilliantly.

I’m definitely gonna try and catch her again when she comes to Birmingham in the new year…

Oh yeah, and Charlotte Hatherley is now in her band.