Late last year, just before Christmas, I shot The DeeVees' first ever show, at the Castle Hotel in Manchester. I'd had the idea in my head for a while — after it was suggested during a portfolio review — to shoot a small documentary book about a band's first gig, just as a way of promoting the fact that I exist.

Well, today that book — actually, a one-shot magazine — is finished and available for sale on Blurb.com!

It's been a fun little project to do. The hardest part was figuring out how to lay out the images that I shot. Is this going to be a new promo mailer for me, as I'd intended? In the, no. It's too much of a documentary and not enough of of a portraiture piece, and portraiture is what I do best. I did shoot a couple of promo images for the band — I'll talk about the technique I used in a later blog post — but that's not the point of the magazine.

Here's the thing that I'm trying to learn this year: it doesn't matter how much you miss your target by, it doesn't matter how hard or soft you feel like you've failed. Everything is worth trying, everything is worth doing. Sure, you've got to be discerning: would I do this project again? Probably not. Was it immense fun to do? Absolutely. But the point is that I tried, and I succeeded in making something, even if it wasn't what I'd intended.

My greatest thanks to The DeeVees for having me. If you're near then when they're playing and you fancy hearing some "filthy Manchester trash punk," you should check them out.