SteveOptix on 500px
Latest Entries »
Even though these images are available to view on my Flickr page, (If you can scroll through nearly 600 pics), these are some of my favorite and the one’s I’m proudest of. I shoot in RAW using my Canon EOS1000D with a UV filter and maybe a polarising filter. Enhancements are usually a contrast tweak with a bit of brightness and maybe a sharpen up.
I do like to do a bit of tweaking in Photoshop to emphasize characteristics in certain shots, most of the time I’ve Photoshopped aspects in my head before I actual make the exposure.
Here’s a few of my sets available to download
| Breaksphere | infosheet |
Style – Thinking Man’s Drum & Bass blended with some old school cutz
Length – 1:13:18
| Welcome to the House | infosheet |
Style – Deep, Retro, Tuff and Vocal house
Length – 1:15:55
| Sky Blue | infosheet |
Style – Deep, Soulful and Mellow House Tunes
Length – 1:12:08
| Balearic Tranquility | infosheet |
Style – Balearic Ambient Soundscapes
Length – 1:07:11
| House Cake Mix | infosheet |
Style – Funky, Electro and Progressive House Music
Length – 1:14:29
| Loungin | infosheet |
Style – Downtempo, Funk, Breakbeat, Jazz, Lounge, Bar, Soundtrack, Chill
Length – 1:13:30
| Rise on Up | infosheet |
Style – House, Old, New, Deep, Tribal, Anthemic, Progressive, Obscure
Length – 1:19:02
Another area I’m very keen on, it took me many years to pick up a camera. My life hasn’t been highly catalogued by photos and it’s something that always grates me. People, Places, Things, Times, Textures, Colours, Curios, Details, all things I feel I’ve missed, I’m now catching up.
Since the purchase of my digital SLR a couple of years ago I embarked upon a period of missions to photograph these things. The things I went looking for started with whatever I could find really, then I developed an interest for urban decay, something that I think comes from my youth exploring abandoned buildings and places. Often though I’d end up taking wildlife and landscape photos, partly due to the lack of urban decay where I live.
Recognition
I think, as with all things in my life, a degree of recognition makes them rewarding and worth doing. It’s very nice doing things for yourself but I think we’re on this planet to share what we’ve gathered and achieved. This runs through my love of music and wanted to DJ to the masses, my retro, collectible stock that needs new homes and of course photographs. I’ve given many away to friends and family and received lots of good feedback which is great but most importantly I’ve had three of my shots published, one in a city guide and two in the local press. I feel this sort of validates my foray into the photography arena and although I will always love photography and my SLR comes many places with me I think I can now tick that box.
My Work
I have images uploaded for sale at Alamy, Optix Images and you can view my collection by visiting Flickr or clicking on the thumbnails on the right. Please feel free to comment on my photos.
Bootlegs are, in my opinion, definitely one of the major gems to come from the dance scene. What better than taking two or three rubbish/mediocre records and turning them into a great one and passing it off as your own creation? The music industry used to hate them until they realised they could get on the bandwagon.
A classic example where the original bootlegger was removed from the loop by the Majors, is ‘Toca’s Miracle’. Someone created a monster in their bedroom when they spliced two middle of the road dance tunes, Coco’s I Need Miracle and Fragma’s Toca Me. The bootleg caused devastation on the dance floor and had the potential to make a mint, there was only so far the original tune-splicer could go though, without sample clearance. Both of the original records were on Positiva Records label, so when they were approached for clearance they thought let’s just put it out our self, they did, and they cleaned up!
Many classic bootlegs from the nineties were stopped by music lawyers and record company executives, which have made many original bootlegs very collectable. The mid to late nineties though, contained a large number of bootlegs using the same tried and tested acapellas and base tracks and after a while it all got very silly.
Bootleg remixes are something else altogether, actually incorporating a high degree of creativity and talent, many bootleg remixers have made great names for themselves. Dave Angel’s Nightmare mix of Eurhythmic’s Sweet Dreams catapulted his career up the ladder in the early nineties and unearthed an amazing talent, (This is one of the most prized records in my collection).
Another example of bootleg remixing boosting careers is the Dex and Jonesy’s illegal mix of Josh Wink’s Higher State of Consciousness. After the huge underground stir the mix caused, Manifesto Records actually licensed their mix for full release and it went top ten, (still not as good as the original though).
If you want to find out more about what’s available try www.htfr.com and look at their DJ Mash Up’s selection
Rare and hard to find dance vinyl can be found in some obscure places and some a lot more obvious. I have been fortunate enough to stumble upon some amazing sources of vinyl. A great place to start is with record shop bargain bins. I actually believe this is what gets you hooked on collecting, when you pick up a copy of Atlantic Ocean’s – Waterfall on E-Bloc in mint condition for 50p, you want to run out into the street and tell someone but you can’t because you always think that the record store has put it in bargain bin by mistake, (or is that just me?).
Another excellent place is car boot sales. This may sound strange at first but when you consider that I once picked up a box of 100 Tony De Vit/Jump Wax/Hard House promos for twenty quid, it makes you think again. It is very possible though that you can trudge round your local car boot early on a Sunday in the rain for weeks before you find anything decent, but then one Sunday you can come home salivating over a huge pile of classic tunes, it does happen.
Online Auctions are one of those rare places that you can find almost any tune you want. Easy to register as a buyer at no cost, dance vinyl goes on average for anything between fifty pence and a tenner for a decent tune.
Charity shops are another great place mainly because they haven’t got a clue. I recently discovered a charity shop about half a mile away from me that, once you’ve passed all the mankey clothes and kids toys, they have a huge set of record shelves with about 4000 tunes on them! I haven’t been in their much recently though after having an argument with an old lady over a Jamie Myerson Cream Coloured 10″ that she claimed was priced wrongly(!?).
Record Fairs are great places. Take a day off and fill your pockets with some wedge, jump in your motor and at the end of the day you can be sitting at home with a fat pile of tunes you’ve been after for ages. Fairs happen up and down the country usually once a week or fortnight, also there are some major one-off events at Wembley Arena etc. Many specialise in purely dance music, try some of these links to find out what’s happening near you. www.vip-24.com, and www.moremusic.co.uk/links/uk_fair.htm.
Buying and selling. One of the best methods so far to find some of those records that have eluded you for years. When I first started buying records in ’88 I couldn’t for the life of me work out how someone could enjoy selling records, when I started selling records myself about a year ago I found out very quickly why.
I started to sell some of the bargain records I had found, on the internet. Very quickly the demand increased and my record finding skills were suddenly much needed. The more journeys out to find records to buy and sell, the more of the records I’d wanted for a while started turning up.
Further to this, I started to buy collections of people, it’s brilliant, keep the ones you want and sell the rest!
To identify unknown white labels, locate the catalogue number engraved in the run out groove and using a search engine like Google, you’ll usually get a match. Alternatively, if you know your record labels, it’s quite easy to deduce which label it is from the abbreviation in the catalogue number.
To give you a good idea of values and degrees of rarity with dance/electronica vinyl, it’s a good idea to get some catalogues from major independent dance music retailers. The bigger ones have been around since the birth of the scene and have well and truly got their finger on the pulse. HTFR.com have got very good catalogues that make great reference material, breaking down into genres and include information on country of origin, year of release, versions etc.
Auction sites on the internet such as ebay and ebid, are excellent places to see what’s actually available on the market, although do not give any real valuations due to the nature of ferocious last minute bidding, and auctions lasting between three and ten days usually means a collector can easily miss the tune he’s after.
If for example you were to search on Todd Terry at ebay you can easily come up with 50-200 records including many releases, promos, test presses, Ltd editions, remixes, re-releases, coloured discs and picture discs you may never have known about.
Books are a definite must for research on vinyl, many dots can be joined and grey areas filled by doing some reading.
Some of the books in my collection include: The Rare Record Price Guide, Last Night A DJ Saved My Life, The Guinness Book of Top 20 Charts, The Rough Guide To Drum & Bass, The Rough Guide To Techno, The Rough Guide To House and the Hard To Find Records Master Catalogue (160,000 records!). Cross referencing these with current and back issues of magazines such as DJ,and Mixmag and past and present catalogues from the likes of Beat Street, HTFR and Dance Music Finder, you can find a lot more about your record’s life and what else is available.
STOP PRESS
I originally wrote this article about 10 years ago, since then we have been blessed with an amazing website in the form of www.discogs.com. This is much like a wiki for dance and electronic music collectors that’s searchable by label, artist, title or catalogue number. Some tunes still take a bit of tracking down but the legwork is greatly reduced.
