Nine Inch Nails, Jane’s Addiction + Mew, Manchester Evening News Arena, 14/07/09

This gig was the photographic highlight of my year.

I got the chance to cover my favourite band, as well as another of the most important rock acts of the past twenty years.

I’ve also never had the chance to take photos in such a massive venue!

Mew

Very difficult to shoot, with sparse lighting being washed over throughout the three songs we had.

However sparse the overhead lighting was, the front lighting was incredibly strong. I had a range of 1/80s and 1/1250s throughout. I kept to ISO 800 and f/2.8 to allow for this fluctuation.

Jane’s Addiction

Next up were Jane’s Addiction and a lengthy wait in the pit followed by a projection intro. The screen lifted up to reveal Perry Farrell, Dave Navarro, Eric Avery and Stephen Perkins (although he was so far away it was impossible to get shots of him!)

The luxurious light and brilliant subjects made this a joy to shoot – although the range between pit and stage made it a slight challenge as well as the quick movement and continuous smoke (which looks fantastic anyway). Focusing was a problem, but the shots really stood out because of their subjects. Kudos to Jane’s Addiction for being great entertainers – loved their set the following night! We only got to shoot two songs because of the length of the first – Three Days. Brilliant fun though. I didn’t deviate from ISO 800, 1/100s and f/2.8 once – thank goodness for RAW!

Nine Inch Nails

And for the main event, almost missed it as I was so into the start of the set! We shot songs 7 (The Becoming), 8 (I’m Afraid of Americans) + 9 (Burn).

Again, the smoke made it really difficult to capture things in focus, but as I had a good idea of how the songs would go down, I managed to catch some great moments. Again, amazing subjects putting their all into the music. Also found it hard to resist being stunned into shock by actually being able to photograph such an incredible band. The lights changed from near darkness to overwhelming white light making me jump from 1/25s at the beginning of song 1 to 1/500s during song 3. Also, because NIN were headlining, I spared no shot, often taking 3 or 4 versions of the same shot – just in case.