Had a great day down at the Brighton Tattoo Convention today at Brighton Racecourse. First off all it was awesome to see my photos on display in the Art Show, which had a whole building of it’s own at the event.

I even got my name on the posters..

Massive thanks to Woody and Lisa Bolton who organised the event and the Art Show. Lisa had some of her own work on show which was fantastic…

Sharing gallery space with me on the upstairs floor was the Sugar Project, which is an art event involving awe inspiring tattoo artists and artists from all over the country and hopefully the world! They have hand painting 50 skulls to be auctioned on ebay with all proceeds going to the urgent appeal to prevent the Woking Hospice from closing.  The first auction will start on March 22nd 2010 and the project will run for 5 days, 10 skulls being auctioned hourly each day.

I ran into some of the guys from Volkszone at the show, including Cherry who had a rather unusual tattoo to add to her collection.

It was a little like walking though a hospital surgery in the artists halls, listening to the needle guns firing as skin was pierced and art created.

Check out more in the flickr set here.

Tags: Art, Brighton Tattoo Convention 2010, Ink, Nick Grant, photographer, Photos, tattoo
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This weekend (30th and 31st January 2010) will see a sneak peek of the new grantgb.com limited edition prints at the Brighton Tattoo Convention. The prints are signed, numbered 10″X15″ prints mounted in 16″X20″ ornate black frames. Limited to a run of 100 per photo. From the forthcoming book Lipstick and Dipsticks. The prints will be launched formally later this year but this is the first time they will be on show to the public and available for purchase.

Tags: Art, brighton tattoo convention, Nick Grant, photographer, Prints
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It was great to get out in the car after seeing nothing but snow for almost a month. Always a great crowd down at the Krispy Kreme meet in New Malden on the third Sunday of the month.

Larger version here

Tags: Chevy, hot rod, krispy kreme, Nick Grant, photographer
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It’s a cool feeling walking into WH Smiths and seeing one of your photos on the cover of a magazine. There are two of my features in the February issue of Custom Car. Three 1955 Chevy Gassers and Steve Withers 32 Coupe. Check it out at all good stockists.

Tags: Cover, Custom Car, Gassers, hot rod, Nick Grant, photographer
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One of the great things about Photoshop is that you can see how things look before spending money doing them for real. I’ve been playing with a shot of my Camaro to see how it would look in a few guises.

Here is the original shot:

Lowered and with Foose Nitro wheels:

Changed colour to black:

Bare metal with a smattering of rust due to the exposed metal:

Nineties style Pro Street pink:

Larger versions are available in the flickr set.

Tags: Camaro, Chevy, Nick Grant, photographer, photoshop, Pro Touring
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I had this tutorial on my old website and it proved to be popular so I thought it was time I moved it to this blog. By following the steps you can create the effect of a very long rig positioned in front or behind a car in motion. As always with Photoshop there are lots of different ways of achieving the same result, this is just how I did it.  The photos have my old URL on them which is no longer active. The cars belong to Derek and Scott Carter hence the title of the image “Father and Son”.

Step 1

The following was all done in Photoshop CS2. I opened up the original file, as you can see it is a little underexposed, this was to retain the detail as there was a lot of glare coming from the windscreens. Have a look for anything that needs fixing, in this case the Plymouths wheels weren’t pointing forward so I had a play with those by using the Polygonal Lasso, Free Transform and then fixing any bits missing with the Clone Tool.

Step 2

Using the Polygonal Lasso I created two new layers (one for each car) that will eventually sit right on top of the image. I created two layers in case I needed to adjust the levels on each car separately (I didn’t in the end).

Step 3

Making a copy of the background layer I cloned out the cars, this is so that when you create the motion blur bits of the car do not create a halo around the cars. You can be pretty rough with this as it is covered and blurred later on.

Step 4

Using the Filter, Blur, Radial Blur select Zoom and best quality, I think I used about 20 for the setting. I offset the centre to the left to be behind the Satellite.

Step 5

Put the layers in the right order. I decided to sort the colour and everything else as a whole so flattened the image and saved it as another file.

Step 6

Now I used the Show/Highlight Tool and played with the levels to sort out the exposure. Gave the image some more colour via saturation and contrast. Once all that was done I ran it through Noise Ninja to clean it up a little.

This particular image went on to be used by UPS for a presentation to Mopar in the US.

Tags: Charger, Dodge, Mopar, Motion, Nick Grant, photographer, photoshop, Plymouth, Sattelite, Tutorial, UPS
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Can’t wait for the February issue of Custom Car, the shot on the top of the preview column in this months mag shows Knoxville Roxie at Tim’s Gasser Cave where we had a blast shooting some very cool Chevy’s.

Tags: Custom Car Magazine, Gasser, hot rod, Knoxville Roxie, Nick Grant, Photography, Tim's Gasser Cave
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Custom Car have now moved on to the January 2010 issue so I can share some photos from last months feature on Callum Tidd’s Lotus Twin Cam powered Ford 100E. Callum lives locally to me so it way easy to meet up for the shoot. I had seem his awesome car driving around the streets of Croydon. We caused a bit of a rucus doing the burnout shots as I hadn’t noticed an open warehouse nearby that we promptly filled with smoke and the occupants came stumbling out through the fog, oops! Still those shots were worth it.

I’ll take this opportunity to say a big thanks to Mike Pye who has been very supportive this year, it’s been great to work with him.

Here are some scans of the article, the text is blurred out, you’ll need to buy a back issue to read the article.

See some more shots from the shoot in the Flickr set here.

Tags: 100E, Burnout, Callum Tidd, Custom Car, Ford, Nick Grant, photographer
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There’s nothing cooler than seeing Hot Rods used in anger. Thank fully Nervous Nick, Editor of the NSRA Magazine Street Gasser seems to agree and has used one of my Hot Rod Hayride track photos for the cover of the December Issue. Also inside is a feature that we put together covering the event.

For more photos from the Hayride check out the Flickr set here.

Tags: Hot Rod Hayride 2009, Nick Grant, NSRA, photographer, Street Gasser
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OK, looks like Milkcow are moving on to the next issue so I’ve uploaded the shots from the feature in issue 5. It always interests me when you see how the art editor has interpreted your work. Obviously a big part of photography is composition so when you see things cropped it can change the shot. I’m not saying I’m always right, it’s just interesting.

Take the centre spread of the mag…

This was how I sent it in…

As you can see it’s has the left side of the doorway chopped off.

Anyhoo, here are some more shots from the shoot, it was shot near to the Ace Cafe back on 2nd May. Cherry was a good laugh, she is a burlesque dancer first and foremost rather than a model.

More in the flickr set here.

Tags: 32 Ford, Burlesque, Cherry Vanity, Milkcow Magazine, Nick Grant, photographer, Pinup
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