Someone though who did do a great job of making my fizzog look more than passable is Mark Who Boy, who like it seems the rest of the Who Boys has given up music and started painting – art is the new rock n’ roll donchaknow!…so of course I had to go sit for Mr Rathmell and had a great evening of wine, chat, art and films about Francis Bacon (and The Acid House, which is well odd if good, especially the last story).

Here are his portraits, for someone who’s only got back into painting this January he is coming on great, very confident lines now and developing his own style. I love how he’s captured my trademark puzzled/inscrutable/confused/squinty expression on #2 and the beard on #1 rocks. I hope to see an exhibition of his work soon!

Tim Baker 2 by Mark Rathmell

Tim Baker 1 by Mark Rathmell

Self Portrait, originally uploaded by fingertrouble.

..but like Anthony Gormley says, I’m available (this is a euphemism for cheap whore when it comes to me, I am the cheapest model I know!)

This is an experiment with some new gear – Cactus Wireless triggers, which I really recommend, 10th of the price of Pocket Wizards which will set you back £400 (!!!) – I’d heard that the old ones (v2) were 7/10 reliable, whereas these v4 ones seem 9 or 10/10 reliable – only started to fail when the flashguns were getting tired, so it was the batteries…other gear is a Sekonic L-308s meter (it’s a little on the frisky side, light wise, but good) and I already had the two Vivitar 283’s from when I bought Fred (my Bronica SQ-Ai medium format camera, you can see it here http://www.flickr.com/photos/fingertrouble/3738490281/).

Another tip is to never throw out polystyrene boards – I was bouncing the light from the flashguns with some boards I found on the street, smart! Just to prove you don’t need a fancy studio to do this…

And this is note that I’ve created a new Flickr account for my ’serious’ photography http://www.flickr.com/photos/fingertrouble/ – this is where my portraits and best work will live – I’ll keep the timbearcub account for personal stuff, Second Life and the like…I like to keep things tidy! Note I’ve updated the best-of too http://www.flickr.com/photos/fingertrouble/sets/72157621471979587/

Back to the music!

Oh did I point out how much I hate my face? Ok. Reasoning is, if I can make myself look beautiful or interesting, I’ve probably got a better chance with everyone else

I tend to keep this blog mostly music based, but for those who may not have guessed I’m a photography nut (my DJ name is Instamatic, go figure) – well more than nut, a nut that wants to make photography it’s lifeblood (treeblood? err enough of metaphors Tim – Metaphorical Ed). I’m doing a Portrait Photography course at Central St. Martins and it’s going well – especially loving the Medium Format Bronica – I want one!

Those that follow my Livejournal and my Twitter/Facebook well know these images – but there are people who just come here, so here’s the Flickr set in handy embeddable form or you could just go to the Portrait Course set, or see my all-time-greatest Portrait set where I put my bestest ones.