This was taken a while ago (Jul 22, 2006, 8:35:27 PM on my first DA bday, this makes it even more special ). I was invited to a gallery opening by Dominic’s (one photographed, also goes by the name of ~fuckartletsdance ) mum, who happened to be one of the hosts, whose work was being featured. Had a blast looking at all the crazy work and i guess had few too many beers. Next thing I knew we were out shooting.

The best part of it all was the fact that I was oblivious to what was going on, Hackney is definitely not the part of London you want to be hanging around with a 500 quid worth of equipment round your neck. Call me crazy but we still carried on, playing pretty much a grown up version of "you’re it" on the way.

I was crazy enough to hide at this laundrette. I was stoked, the backdrop full of heavenly ambient lighting and the cliché washing machines. Hiding behind the bin was bloody hard, yet somehow I managed to wait it out for him to come in without making a sound. And there he was in the doorway, looking around, looking like a punk after a bad nights sleep. And the moment was there. My 55mm macro-nikkor prime never fails , with the aperture set to f/22 and shutter speed at 1/30 of a second I decided to make a break for it. And this is how the image was born. I chose f/22 because I wanted to capture darker tones since I was gonna convert this to B&W afterwards in Photoshop where I would have most likely stripped it off its prior appearance, plus its given me a lovely DOF, and 1/30 of a sec has given me a lovely movement in the picture as Dominic was reaching for the door knob. It is indeed an unusual thing to see a punk "spring cleaning" and seeing "them" in a laundrette would be even weirder so I would say I had captured quite a peculiar moment right there.

Model: NIKON D50
Shutter Speed: 1/30th of a second
F Number: F/22 (manual apperture ring, camera couldn't read that off)
ISO: 200

1. Auto Levels
2. Select only blue channel
3. Go to Greyscale Mode, disregard other channels
4. Go back to RGB Mode
5. Create a New Adjustment Layer, with Gradient Map. Set the gradient to go from black to white, thus #000000 to #ffffff
6. Create a New Adjustment Layer, with Hue/Saturation. Set Saturation to -100%
7. And last and probably most important. Create a New Adjustment Layer, with Channel Mixer.
Tick the Monochromatic option,
Set RED to +34%,
Set GREEN to +118%,
Set BLUE to -8%,
Set Contrast to -8%,
Click OK and you're finished.