Klezmer Kollectiv

Very interesting band I had the pleasure to photograph this week. First time I’ve taken photos of such a band.

More updates coming, I’ve been very lax, apologies.

new portfolio

10 new photos – and a re-shuffle

once I’ve finished the mountains of work, I’ll get started on some photography blogs (including details on my new lens and use of a flash gun!)

2008 Summary

Total gigs/one day festivals shot – 47
Total (individual) bands shot – 137

Best shoots
Big Weekend, Cardiff – Biggest ever event I’ve done, huge acts, great lighting, fantastic day
The Music, Cardiff University – amazing feeling alone in a pit with a fantastic band
TheSprout.co.uk Battle of the Bands – meeting tons of new young bands, awesome
Innerpartysystem at Barfly – intense, with great support acts
The Red Festival + Battle – fantastic, huge events
The Academy Is… at Clwb Ifor Bach – so much fun!

Worst shoots
Anything in 10 Feet Tall – atrocious lighting
Spending hours in Barfly + Clwb – nearly collapsing under hopelessness

Best music
Dashboard Confessional
Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly
The Music
Attack! Attack!
Jubilee
Caesars Rome
Johnny Foreigner
Vessels
Stray Borders
Nix Olympica

Worst music
The Maine
The Clay
The Automatic
MirrorView
Jizzwagon (as bad as they sound)
Some atrocious young bands who I won’t name

2008 – a year in photos

So, after shooting my last gig of the year a week ago, I thought I’d take a look back through my first full year of concert photography and pick out the highlights.

January

Only two gigs in January – Teen Spirit (with Saving Aimee, above) and Stray Borders at Tommy’s Bar – read my very first review here

February

From the dark of The Mentalists at Chapter to the light of Lemons in the Old Church Rooms and the warmth of Yeti (above) in Barfly to the fantastic Working Class Heroes in the same venue.

March

My biggest act to that date – Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly (above) in Spillers Records, where I became a regular during 2008 as well as a rather rowdy gig at Barfly with The Metros and The Clay (read the review)

April

The month of the photo pass! Dashboard Confessional (my first US band), Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly (with I Was A Cub Scout, above) and The Automatic. This month also held the first few round of theSprout.co.uk’s battle of the bands which I became involved with and met a good number of new bands.

May

The start of my exams prompted a slowdown, but that wasn’t enough to stop my half term exhausting me with the fantastic experience of helping to put on a gig with two of my favourite bands Vessels + Stray Borders. (See the blog) as well as attending Teen Spirit (with Mass Appeal above), Lightspeed Champion and the final of the Battle Of The Bands in the same month.

June

Again, hindered by two weeks of exams, I focused all my energies into the second half of the month to attend a number of gigs. The incredible set of The Music (above) produced fantastic photos, Attack! Attack! in Clwb Ifor Bach had me speechless and a spur-of-the-moment gig at Barfly with innerpartysystem and Caesars Rome rounded off a fantastic month.

July

A quiet month, despite being off school for all of it thanks to my exams, I still managed to fit in an all-day festival which had me simultaneously photographing it and running the main stage. Finishing off the month strongly again with a rather varied gig in Buffalo Bar and a fantastic set from Ulteria Motive (above)

August

Although it doesn’t look like it from my calendar, August was a packed month. The Big Weekend with a whole host of bands headlined by Ash, my first promo shoot (finally published here), another spur-of-the-moment gig with Future Of The Left, The Red Festival at the end of the month, which was a fantastic (very long and loud!) chance to improve my skills. The highlight of this month though was the above photo – Aaron North of Jubilee.

September

The start of a new school year, and only two gigs. The Red Festival again was another chance to improve my portfolio and skills (headlined by the fantastic Working Class Heroes) and another American band graced Cardiff – The Academy Is… (above) put on a show to burst your eardrums – from the crowd screaming.

October

Disappointingly only one proper gig throughout the whole of October, what was I doing? Vessels returned to Cardiff with the impressive Talons in tow. I also managed to see Attack! Attack! yet again in Spillers Records with a drastically different acoustic set (above). October was also the month I started using my new Canon 40D with impressive results.

November

Another pretty bare month, but with a few good shots from the 40D from both TheSprout.co.uk’s launch and the Outcry Collective gig with PublicAsylum and Monday Massacre (above).

December

With an epic amount of bands at The Red Battle final and a great couple of passes with The Futureheads and Attack! Attack!, a great way to end the year. To round it off, above is a look at things to come – more energy, wider angles, more awesomeness and more awesome bands like Ulteria Motive.

My new camera – Canon 40D + 50mm 1.8

It might seem boring and technical, but this step up has made a ton of difference…

My only problems with it? Depth of field, no zoom, and an extremely close range… of course, this is all sacrificed because of the awesome low light capabilities.

And the 40D? Beautiful… when I want to take a photo, it takes it, and does it in exactly the way I want it to – no noise, not crappy colours, just perfect. Now all I have to contend with is bad lighting, bad positioning and urr, bad bands…

Talons (supporting Vessels)

Talons

Originally uploaded by stellarspontaneous

Here’s my latest, a rather intense shot of Hereford band Talons (formerly known as Kites) supporting Vessels in Buffalo Bar, Cardiff last night.
Shot with my 40D + 50mm 1.8. Sometimes it’s difficult to be so close, other times it’s fantastic.
I’ll be sorting out the broken photos on this blog soon, I’ve had a bit of a haul-over on flickr

The best of the rest…

I’ve been neglecting the blog for a while, so I’ll update you with my best shots from the past few months…

The Red Festival – 14th September

The Academy Is… + The Maine – 13/09/08

The Red Festival – 31/08/08

Jubilee – 21/08/08

Future Of The Left, Fighting With Wire – 12/08/08

Ulteria Motive + Silent Faces – 30/07/08

Under Construction Festival – 05/07/08

Caesars Rome (supporting innerpartysystem) – 30/06/08

Three gigs in one day – Attack! Attack!/These United States in-store and live

Cardiff’s Big Weekend 03/08/08

The three day event ended with a day full of rock music – including popular locals The Automatic (sound familiar?). Here are the photographic highlights.

Go:Audio

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Conditions: First three songs, no flash – photo pit (with video cameras on platforms to avoid)

First up were two acts which I wasn’t in the pit for – Welsh language band Frizbee and acoustic virtuoso Yoav – the latter being so fantastic he deserves a lookup.

First act in the pit was Beth Rowley, although none made it into the final photo collection. The same is to be said of Glasvegas. Both acts didn’t really give me an opportunity to show my worth. (edit: until later on when I had the chance to look over some and re-do them)

So here are the rest (in chronological order)…

Go:Audio

Energetic to the brim, and fantastic to shoot. If they’re on the bill, don’t avoid them. Just bring earplugs to drown out the screaming fans.

The Automatic

I knew what I was up against this time (from the abysmal, boring set I had last time) and so I managed to get a couple of great shots thanks to the generous lighting.

The Young Knives

A great sounding band, but visually they became boring quickly. A couple of good shots however – again due to some fantastic lighting.

Ash

The finale, and some great posing from the three-piece (who I preferred as four) with Darth Mark Hamilton on crazy bass and Tim Wheeler pulling some power stance spectaculars with a flying V. Photogenic is hardly the word.

Lighting + Position: Throughout the day it became clear that shooting at 1/100s was ridiculously slow. With speeds up to 1/400s and a generous aperture I got some brilliant shots. I love shooting festivals now, but I may stick to one-days as I’m always exhausted afterwards. Even into the night the lighting was fantastic. The pit was quite full and a bit odd with it being so exposed and with two video cameras for the big screen next to the stage. During Ash’s set I managed to survive the oncoming rush of crowd surfers being hurled over the barrier to the sacrifice of some missed shots. Overall a fantastically successful day.

You can check out what other gigs I’ve been doing here, I’m reserving this blog for the big ones (and there are plenty more coming soon!)

The Music + Exit Calm at Cardiff Solus -16/06/08

They said it was good to be back, then they blew away the crowd with songs ranging back to their 2001 debut. The Music are a cleverly, subtle band who perform music and don’t mess about with it… and I was in the photo pit – alone.

It’s true, when I turned up and found I was not on the guestlist (which was sorted by showing them my confirmation email) they were surprised to even know there were going to be photographers…

Thanks to this luxury, I had free reign of the photo pit for the three songs of each band, which was fortunate, because Rob Harvey (above) moved around an awful lot…

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Conditions: First three songs, no flash – (empty) photo pit

Exit Calm

Full set here

After scouting The Music’s forum for information on Exit Calm, I found one fan say that “if The Music picked them, they must be good”. They certainly did give an above average performance. Their lead head problems with his mic stand, which gave me some interesting shots (I know, weird) and the stage was thinned by the presence of The Music’s gear. Like with I Was A Cub Scout, the drumkit was closer to the stage than normal, giving me some rare drummer shots. However, there was a major difficulty with the photos of the set…

Lighting + Position – Solus is a mixed bag with lighting, as unlike The Point, all lighting is controlled by the tour’s lighting designer. Unfortunately, it seems Exit Calm didn’t have one, and for the entire set the stage was bathed in blue. I was annoyed by this in the pit, but when I started post I realised blue is far easier to work with than red… Bass and drums were on far (stage) right, with the lead and guitarist on centre left, so I went back and forth to get shots of each. Being unaware of the band’s music, I didn’t go for music-sequenced shots, but just tried to get good portraits. Starting off with settings at ISO 800, f/2.8 and 1/100s I realised straight away that the blue light was too powerful for these settings, so I upped the shutter speed and the aperture. I worked with the blue tinged smoke as well to create a misty effect on many of the photos.

The Music

Full set here

I managed to get a photo of the set list and work out what I was going to do for the first three songs, which was ace.

(click to see)

Unfortunately as soon as they started, the stage was bathed in light, but none on the actual band, so for the first minute of the set I was snapping away at near darkness… thankfully it did pick up. They played a brilliant set, and I knew two of the three opening songs, the second one being quite mellow, letting me relax a bit. I followed Rob Harvey (lead singer) for the most part, as well as getting some good shots of guitarist Adam Nutter. Bassist and drummer were either obscured by poor light or kit. At one point, Rob reached out towards the camera (providing the shot at the top) and I was worried for a moment he’d grab it off me (a la Cedric of The Mars Volta) but instead gave me my favourite shot of the night… he switched to playing guitar for the second song, but for songs 1 and 3 I was free to shoot his epic dancing.

Lighting + Position – Strobes! Getting a clean shot with bright light is a pay-off, but you have to time it so you don’t get black. Some of the strobes were backlit and some front lit, with the back lit ones giving some great silhouettes and views of the drummer, and the front ones overexposing the camera. Due to the richness of lights the aperture stuck around f/4.0 which is rare for me. Shutter speeds ranged from 1/40s to 1/160s and ISO switched from 800 to 1600 during strobing.

Edit – here’s a photo from the front gate of the second song (provided by theano, thanks!) – You clearly can see the extent of the strobing and one of the shots above were taken in this song (see if you can guess which!).

And with that…

I draw a long sigh of relief…

All the work that needed to be done regarding gigs is now complete -

- Teen Spirit photos online (twice) and sent to bands
- Teen Spirit review done (and not sent to bands in fear of death)
- Best photos from Teen uploaded and tagged
- Buying + making food for the Vessels gig
- Arriving at the Vessels gig, and getting unnerved by nervous promoters :P
- Directing Vessels and loading in
- Soundchecking, feeding, worrying about being under 18
- Finally relaxing as the gig starts but then tensing due to me having a camera and the amount of flash being used by others with cameras putting me… yeah I’ll stop being a snob
- Watching the amazing Stray Borders
- Watching the ah-mazing Vessels
- Loading out and driving back
- Preparing breakfast at 9am after getting back at 12.30am (teenagers need more sleep!)
- Waving goodbye to Vessels (it was hard, they’re lovely guys)
- Editing through the blurred and charred-by-slow-shutter-speeds excuses for photos
- Choosing and uploading the (two!) best photos

And finally, this blog – here are the best photos starting with Teen Spirit’s

Mass Appeal

Soph, Ell & The Octopus

Jettison County

and the Vessels gig organised by The Only Alternative (my friend’s promotion company) and God Is In The TV Zine (the magazine I work for). Low low shutter speeds again as it was another 10 Feet Tall gig. Managed to make them look pretty this time…

Now! Off to revision!