Jason Parlour

Jason of many trades : Maker & Fabricator, Engineer, Massage Therapist, Presenter, Photographer, Web Developer, …

Author: Jason

  • Miss Pole Dance UK Finals 2009

    It was a pleasure to be invited back to Miss Pole Dance UK 2009 this year, as an official photographer of the event. Once again, it was held in the great venue of Scala, near Kings Cross.

    – See the full collection of images on Flickr

    Unfortunately, because of other commitments I was only able to make the final part of the event, however this was certainly very worthwhile attending, with some superb performances from some familiar faces, and some incredible new faces too.

    I was very lucky with the lighting on this image of Faye Chatterley, especially with the uplighting on a member of the audience gazing at the performance.
    In this image, the resulting winner Maxine (Maria Betts) was just completing the final part of a ball drop from the top of the pole. It was great to get the expression of the audience within this one too.
    This was taken at the end of a great doubles entry by Deb Riley and Sasha Kavaleva.
    After the end of the competition, last year’s Miss Pole Dance winner, Alesia Vazmitsel gave another superb performance. This particular move shown above, isn’t normally my preferred body angle for Pole photos, however the incredible strength and flexibility of this move makes it pretty special, and so well worth posting regardless.

    If you’d like to see the rest of the images from the evening, a little over 600 images can be viewed through the full collection on Flickr.

    If you’d like to purchase any images, please do so via the normal payment page.

  • Search Engine Optimisation

    I’m often asked about Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), and of course even more often hear of the huge numbers of people claiming to know lots about it, and will help you for a very significant price (without actually covering all that many aspects).

    If you don’t already know, SEO, is the term given to designing your website in such a way (at the coding level), that it appeals to Search Engines like Google. Essentially, the more it appeals to the search engines, the higher up in the ‘natural listings’ your website will be, and therefore, typically, the more visitors and thus more business you’ll get.

    For example, if you do a search for ‘Pole Dancing Reading’ on Google, you’ll see it gives around 372,000 results. But right up there at the top, on number 1 of the listings, is one of my clients’ websites PurityPoleDancing for Pole Dancing in Reading. This is an example, of free, good natural search listings (and good SEO).

    The Purity website for its first 18 months since the changeover, was getting an average increase in visitors, by 15-20%, every month, based on visitor numbers from the month before. This accumulates to an increase of over 450% in web traffic over the year!

    There really are massive numbers of things you can do to improve the natural search listings of your website, some are good, and others will actually damage your listing and may get your website blacklisted and thus removed entirely for at least 3 months from Google.

    Techniques are also constantly changing, and things that work today, may not work tomorrow. The ‘art’ to effective SEO is very much an art form in itself, and the Search Engines themselves generally don’t like to share too much on what they’re doing next to help improve their search results. The general gist is quite simple though:

    • Design your website for a human user, not a search engine. What you do then isn’t likely to upset your position on search engines over time, but actually improve it. (‘Tricks’ to help fool search engines to give you higher rankings, normally backfire in the near future).
    • Ideally, use simple html code for the content, and CSS for the design. That way, if you think of a character screen reader, on dial-up, trying to view your website: If they can find their way around easily, and read your content, it’s likely the Search Engines will too.
    • Keep the content relevant, and up-to-date, and add new relevant content regularly (‘blogs’ are great for this).
    • Try to encourage real people and well positioned websites (ideally reputable news sources) to link to your website because they want to, because of your great website content.
    • Don’t be drawn in to spending money with companies who phone you, offering to improve your Search Rankings by listing you on their website, etc. Bad links to your website, and bad links from your website, can actually damage your web reputation (and thus your visitor numbers).
    • Keep things simple, and write in clean English (or of course other relevant languages) with content that’s relevant to your website. (Don’t add lists of keywords, just for the sake of it to try and help with search rankings.)

    If you’d like to learn some more detailed information about SEO, please feel free to get in contact directly.

    I was also fortunate to find some nicely listed SEO tips on another website page recently, that’s worth checking out if you design websites yourself.

  • Pole Divas in Bristol

    I was very pleased to be taking photos at the recent Pole Divas Event in Bristol.

    Here’s one of my favourite images from the evening:

    Please view the Flickr Gallery if you’d like to see some more images from the event.

  • UKAPP Finals – 2009-09-12 (UK Amateur Pole Performers) – Reading

    This was the national finals, held in Reading, and hosted by Stacey and Kat.

    To see the full collection, please visit the pages on Flickr:

  • Pole Masterclass with Suzie Q 2009-09-06

    I felt privileged to be invited to take photos at the Suzie Q Masterclass in Berkshire on Sunday (and am fortunate to be working with her again later this week).

    She’s certainly an amazing pole teacher (and of course a superb performer), whilst at the same time, being a really genuine, and lovely person. It was a pleasure to meet her, and a real bonus that she was so supportive in helping arrange for portraits at the end of the day. My thanks go out to her.

    Around 170 photos from the day can now be found on Flikr:
    http://www.flickr.com/photos/jasonparlour/sets/72157622162566329/
    (although unfortunately lighting was a bit of an issue down in the club).

    If you’d like to purchase any of these images, for personal use on places like Facebook, etc. I’ve arranged a deal at simple £5 for five images, sent digitally via email to you (without the central ‘copyright’ watermark).

    Signed prints by Suzie Q

    If you’d like an A4 high quality photographic print, personally signed by Suzie Q this Saturday 12th Sept and then posted out to you the following week (or collected on the night), please arrange for a payment of £10 per image, to me by Friday at 12pm (midday) at the latest, with details of the image numbers you’d like printed (ie ‘IMG_8611’).

    If you’d like to pay by PayPal, there will be a slight admin charge because of the costs incurred. Similarly, postage will be at cost if you’d like delivery rather than collection. If you can let me know in advance which images you’d like printed though, you can bring cash to the UKAPP finals in Reading on Saturday.

    Larger Prints / Commercial Use

    If of course you’d like any of these images blown up to A3 photographic prints (on paper or canvass), or even A2 posters (although there won’t be time to get the anything above A3 signed), please get in contact immediately.

    Similarly, if you’d like to use them on your own professional website for publicity purposes, etc. then a reasonable arrangement can be made, so please do get in contact.

  • Suzie Q’s Master Class – 2009-09-06

    Suzie Q is an amazing Australian pole dancer and performer.  I was fortunate to work with her on a number of photography projects during her brief tour of the UK.

    This was one of her ‘master class’ workshops, held in Berkshire.

    To see the full collection of images, please use the following link:

    Unfortunately signed copies of the after workshop shoots are no longer available to purchase, but original prints can be.

  • 1000 Revolutions Per Moment – 2009-09-04

    I felt very fortunate to watch and capture images from the very first interactive contemporary theatre performance of 1000 Revolutions Per Moment.

    The interactive art piece began in the theatre, and quickly flowed out onto the streets around Reading town centre.

    It was a hugely dynamic performance, I’m just sorry not to have been able to video the entire experience from four simultaneous angles (which is about the nearest way you might appreciate the level of details the group went to).

    My own limited collection of images can thus be seen below:

  • Pole Divas – 2009-08-31 – London heat

    To see the full collection of images from this heat, please visit the Flickr link:

  • Purity’s Birthday Party – 2009-08-23

    Jolene cutting the Birthday Cake at the Purity party, at the Purity Studio.

    Purity had their first Birthday party at the Purity Studio, and so I was asked to capture images from the event, and take a few white backdrop images too of the new students.

    As you can see, it was a very casual event, so there’s a lot of distraction in the backgrounds.

    Please do get in contact though, if you’d like any higher resolution copies or prints.

  • UK Amateur Pole Performer 2009-08-08

    Lisa, performing at the UKAPP Wokingham heat.

    A couple of days ago, I was capturing images from the UKAPP event.   The standard of performance by the competitors was superb (with each competitor being only a pole student).

    The location was a regular night club in Wokingham, hired out for the day.

    You can see the larger collection of images via the link below:

    To purchase any of the images, please do so via the regular contact routes.