DJ Gurps and Ali Abbas

DJ Gurps new track Ouskurri 2 featuring Manak e releases at midnight tonight so I thought I'd show two covers that the label came up with along with a few of the originals.
 
Ali and I took these shots very early this year (I may have even been late last year) in east London and I still think of it as one of my favourite shoots. We came out with some great stuff and Ali was a joy to work with.  

The design lads, whoever they are, have done an excellent job on both covers but I'm particularly impressed with the blending of Ali into another shot of the background, very good skill and vision.

And tonight, DJ Gurps releases his latest song - Ouskurri part 2 feat Manak e. Another long but awesome video shoot in Birmingham. I love this shot, mainly because it required going back to basics and using a really simple lighting set up I hadn't used in a while. The idea wasn't mine. I found the lighting and location but Gurps and his lovely model (who later became my lighting assistant) came up with the idea and poses. In the end we came up with a shot I really like. We put the light on top with the model the other side of gurps and provided a light fill with a reflector attached to my car (yep, see set up shot). Here's the original from that the cover shot along with the set up :)