I am delighted to announce that I have now installed a blog on my portfolio site at www.martinecotton.com. I have exported all these posts to that blog, and will no longer be updatingat this location. See you over there!

M xo

Port Douglas. Love this town. I’ve been back here about 10 weeks now, done about one photo job for every week I’ve been here. Which is a nice handy pace considering I’m working my ass off as one of the coordinators of the towns annual Carnivale, 5 days a week. I’m working towards that day when Carnivale is all over (June 1) and I can focus on being a full time photographer here.

To that end I just tied up a sponsorship deal with the local Chamber of Commerce in which I become the Official Event Photographer for 2009 Port Douglas Carnivale. This means that I am going to do a truckload of free photography for the community events which are a part of Carnivale in an effort to get my name out there. I hope that doing this will pay off for me:

1. by getting my name and services out there and widely visible,
2. and that the commercial event managers will employ me.

Doing pro bono work as a photographer is sometimes seen as betraying yourself and your fellow photographers by devaluing public perception of photographers rights & services, but you know, community participation is vitally important and none of these community groups have the money to pay a professional photographer. Yet without great, dynamic images, the entire event suffers because it’s so hard to get decent media coverage. So actually, rather than devaluing public perception, I hope that I actually garner some respect and support and the whole action-reaction process society runs on will see me get rewarded with paid work.

As part of my on-going work with the excellent real estate agency Port Douglas Real Estate – I get to go into beautiful homes and photograph them for their publicity packages. Would you take a look at this particular house! Bloody magnificent, if I had 1.5 mill it would be mine. It’s up at Wonga Beach and you can see the full listing at the Port Douglas Real estate web site.

Some photo’s I took out at a local 5 star resort for Vogue Entertaining and Food a few weeks ago.

Lara and Eric are a really creative couple, and their 3 kids are these adorable bundles of curiosity and joy. On New Years Eve I peddled my mini-studio over to the other side of Kichijoji and set up in their tatami room for some family portraits. It was such a pleasure, and editing them was even more fun because I was allowed to really play with the images. This was the first time I played confidently with things like borders and textures to create dreamy film-like art pieces because the clients had artistic tendencies themselves and wanted me to knock them out. The challenge was on! The images I have posted here are a wide sampler of the different things I tried here, and a part of the final collection as chosen by the clients.

Back in December, before I left Tokyo, I got a flurry of really cool portrait jobs. Sarah is works in the corporate sector and needed some new photo’s that reflected her new look and approach for the wide array of work she was involved with. We called in the very talented Jeanette from StyleSmartSensei to do Sarah’s hair, makeup and outfits while I set up my little mini-studio. Sarah is such a star, she kept us all chuckling all night long as we fussed over her and made her feel like a member of royalty. A great night, a great shoot and great results.

Dave G is a comedian in Tokyo, and needed some new publicity shots for his work, and for a new book he’s working on. It was a fun day, we got some great shots.

Erochika Bamboo was the star of the November Dr Sketchy’s. The lady is a class act, a true veteran performer and charmer. Such a pleasure to photograph!

The fabulous team over at Baby Loves Disco Tokyo put on a Christmas Party at Legato’s, in Shibuya, for 200+ kids and their parents, including a Santa corner. It was a hoot, of course – and you gotta love hanging out with Santa and the kids and trying to get the perfect photo. [Tip: Chocolate helps get rid of those scaredy-cat tears!.....]

Ashley recently popped the question to Tracey and she, of course, said hell yes! These are some of their engagement photo’s. It was a delight to shoot, they are such great people and I wish them all sorts of joy and passion in their married life.