Parliment & Canary Wharf, originally uploaded by Ben Grubb.

Last night I went out for an hour or so with the camera. It feels like ages since I’ve done it. It’s definitely night photography season now – It’s freezing out there! Time to dig out the gloves and scarf me thinks…

Anyway, I wanted to try and get a slightly different perspective (as always) so I headed to Westminster Cathedral. The tower at the cathedral offers a really great view out to some of London’s best sights (including a personal favourite: Canary Wharf). You don’t have totally 360 degree rein up there, but it’s still pretty good – Although it was pretty tricky getting my tripod to fit into the spaces provided to take in the view. I like a challenge though, and I got some shots I was pleased with. I really want to try and find some other places around the city so I can have a bit more aerial action!

Urban Climber #34, originally uploaded by Ben Grubb.

A few weeks ago, I had one of those small, yet hugely exciting moments which you get in life from time to time. I tried to keep it secret from those involved but I didn’t manage it – thankfully it didn’t all fall down around my ears and leave me looking like a fool. Anyway, the exciting news was this: I had sent off some climbing polaroids to Urban Climber magazine, after we noticed there was a short article in one of the previous issues, asking for people to send them in. At the time, we were at the Hueco Rock Ranch in Texas, so it seemed like a good idea for me to take my Polaroid into Hueco Tanks the next day in the hope of getting some decent shots. It certainly paid off! I took a few shots of my friends on various classic problems during the course of the next day, and when I got back to London, I scanned them in, wrote a long, waffley email to accompany them and sent them off into the ether in the direction of UC headquarters. I soon forgot about them until a couple of months later when someone from the magazine got in touch via Twitter and asked if they could print them. Naturally, I jumped at the chance – and here they are. I had originally sent in four different shots, of which only two were used, and the letter was heavily (yet understandably) edited down. But, none the less I can now say that I have had my photos printed in a worldwide, hugely popular climbing publication!

The letter did run across two pages, so I have taken the liberty of scanning the two halves in for your convenience. Click on the image to the left to see a larger version. Also, the individual shots can be seen on Flickr. The ones they used are Ben Sales on Daily Dick Dose (V7) and Snooky on Nobody Here Gets Out Alive (V2). I also sent in this shot of Ashby on ‘Nobody Here…’ and another one of Benny on ‘Self Service’ (V4/5) in Joe’s Valley, UT. I’m hoping I can get them to print some more of my stuff. I’ve certainly got a taste for it now!

Recently, I’ve been getting rather obsessed with printing websites like Moo and Blurb. They are pretty damn addictive! Its exciting to be able to order really high quality business cards, postcards and even hard back books(!!) whilst still retaining a very large amount of creative control and all for a reasonable price. Blurb especially is my favourite. I’m a sucker for nice, well designed, image heavy hard back books, and will lovingly pour over them for hours in bookshops. So, when I photographed Lee & Chloe’s Wedding a couple of months back, it seemed like the perfect time to test out what Blurb could do. They certainly didn’t let me down! Within two weeks of starting the project, I had in my hands a great, 7 inch square, 52 page book documenting the day. I ordered a copy for the happy couple and they were totally blown away by it (which was very flattering). So much so in fact that they asked me to order them another three copies for the family! Since then, I’ve really gone into overdrive trying to get the book from our America trip sorted. I’ve done a shorter version for my good friend James who was with us for the first two weeks, which (at the time of press) I have ordered but have yet to receive. You can see the preview of it on the Blurb website though. I really hope he likes it! The full version will hopefully be finished before too long – it’s going to be a monster!

A few days ago I received a box of postcards from Moo which are really nice. I thought it would be good to have something which I could as self promotion and compliments slips etc, but which were a bit more exciting than just cut down A4 paper. I’m very pleased with them, but I have to say, the business cards I ordered from them are superb! Really great, thick stock and with a mixture of designs so you can tailor which ones you want to give out to different potential clients! All for around £15! Bargain! These sites really are playing on my love affair with stationery – I just have to watch I don’t get too carried away…

Tim, Mike & Paul, originally uploaded by Ben Grubb.

Last week I went along to a couple of Wintersleep shows – one of my favourite past times! The first was in the biggest venue I’ve seen them in to date: Hammersmith Apollo. They have been opening for Editors on their UK tour along with a band called Airship. It was a really great, albeit short show and they played a new track called ‘Black Camera’ from their forth coming album. It sounds great. I can’t wait to hear the rest of it! I didn’t take my camera to that show as I didn’t have a photo pass and I couldn’t really be bothered with the hassle for trying to get my gear past security for a seven song set. Besides, I had a golden opportunity to shoot them again on the Saturday night at The Tabernacle in Notting Hill.

Snoo and I were heading along to the show on the Saturday night in West London, and as a nice surprise, a few days before our friend Gill got in touch and asked if she could join us as she was over in London from France with her daughter. Of course! The more the merrier! We’d never been to The Tabernacle before, and we were very pleasantly surprised. There was a really nice bar/restaurant thing downstairs where we had some food before heading up to the stage.

The main room was really well lit and the stage was pretty low which was great for getting different angles during the show. The good, bright lighting was really nice as it meant that I could break away from just using my prime lens and get some nice wide angle shots for a change. Airship were also acting as the support band for this show as well, so I shot a few photos of them before Wintersleep took the stage.

Wintersleep put on a great show as usual, and I was totally in my element shooting hundreds of photos! I had a pretty intense editing session over the next couple of days, and even after being pretty ruthless I still ended up with 100+ photos being uploaded to Flickr. I was

very pleased. I managed to have a quick chat with Loel, Mike and Tim from the band and gave them some business cards etc. I can’t wait for them to come back over again, and I can see them again – maybe as their official photographer. Good times!

Also, last week my Dad and I went to the Canon Pro Photo Solutions exhibition in Islington. It was a really great show full of interesting exhibits and seminars. We were there for about six hours playing with new gear and chatting to people. We also attended some interesting talks, mainly about software and things. My favourite talk of the day was on Adobe Lightroom 2 by a guy called Dave Mallows. It was a fairly basic introduction to Lightroom (which is what I needed) but it really helped and taught me some really useful stuff. Because of that talk, I now have new look flash galleries on my website which I didn’t realise you could produce in Lightroom. They are live now, and you can see them in the Photography section of the site. Let me know what you think!

I think that’s all for now. Hopefully I’ll have more stuff to add soon. Oh, and it’s November now which means this new look version of the site has been running for a year already! Hurrah! Here’s to many more…