Nick Miners Photography

As I’ve men­tioned before, 2012 marks the year when I start up as a full-​​time pro­fes­sional pho­to­grapher, and so as much a cliche as it sounds, the end of 2011 really is the end of an era for me (unless it all goes hor­ribly wrong and I have to find paid employ­ment again). It was also the year of the gig shot, with around 40 con­certs and a couple of fest­ivals. I have to say thanks to Oli, Tim and James at The 405 for the oppor­tun­it­ies they’ve given me, and also Gary at Drowned in Sound and Jenny at Coun­ter­feit, who have also both played their part. In addi­tion, there have been numer­ous PR people and pro­moters who have helped me get to see some of the most excit­ing new acts around, and spe­cial men­tion should go to Kamilla at Ice­land Air­waves and her gang for being really help­ful in get­ting us all to Reykjavík.

I have also vis­ited Switzer­land, the Shet­land Islands, and the Lake Dis­trict, and spe­cial men­tion should also go to my hosts Simon in Zürich (who is now in Brus­sels) and Frances in Shetland.

Finally, thanks to my many friends who have sup­por­ted and encour­aged me through­out the year. You know who you are, so I won’t name you as I’ll only for­get someone.

Any­way here is an end-​​of-​​year round-​​up of my favour­ite images from this pivotal year. Hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed tak­ing them.

God Don’t Like It, run by Anthony Chalmers, is put­ting on a series of farewell shows this week as Anthony looks to pur­sue other interests and draws a close to the GDLI name. The first of the three shows at the Lex­ing­ton in Lon­don fea­tured Drum Eyes, an immensely noisy band who fea­ture no fewer than three drum­mers, sup­por­ted by the sim­il­arly noisy weird­ness of Christ­mas Gimp.

Here’s a double-​​whammy for you. New York punks Cereb­ral Ballzy played at the Macbeth in Hox­ton a week ago and I caught the action for Drowned in Sound. Flash was a no-​​brainer here, really, as it was rather dark and there was quite a lot of run­ning around going on, as you can ima­gine. Sheffield’s own Grazes warmed the crowd up with a bonkers performance.

Then, last night, almost exactly one year after I took my first set of gig pho­to­graphs, I shot Emir Kus­tur­ica and the No Smoking Orches­tra at the Royal Fest­ival Hall, sup­por­ted by Gabby Young and Other Anim­als, as part of Lon­don Jazz Fest­ival — two bands who brought the house down. For an all seater venue, there was an awful lot of dan­cing going on, and at one point the audi­ence were even invited onto the stage, much to the dis­may of the house staff who were try­ing des­per­ately to retain a sense of order…

Icelandic jazz pian­ist, and a friend of mine, Sunna Gunnlaugs, played a set at the Bar­bican this past week­end as part of Lon­don Jazz Fest­ival to pro­mote her new album, Long Pair Bond. Here are a few pics from the occasion.

A few shots from Ice­land, away from the Air­waves festival.