You Ain't Seen Me......... Right?

Justin Kool, bass player with the John Fairhurst band, said something interesting to me on Saturday after their show. He said "One of the best things about you taking our photographs is that I never notice you taking the pictures. I'm not aware of you being there."

I liked that comment.

One thing I'm very wary of as a music photographer is my presence at the gig when I start to 'work'. That goes for off stage as well as on stage. My natural instinct (probably due to my appreciation of the great street photographers), is to remain inconspicuous. This is despite a recent, notable event (more on this some other time).

At gigs I don't want to be spotted by the musicians. And I want to keep out of the way of the audience if I can help it. That's equally as important. I don't want to distract from the show; the focus should be on the bands not what crew and photographers are doing in the wings.

I've seen some photographers who stand directly in front of the musicians in their eye line with a lens pointing them square in the face. They get some amazing closeup shots, but that style is not really for me. Distracting for bands and audience? I'm not sure. To a large extent I like to focus on the environment as a subject as well as the musicians.

Having said all that, some musicians will certainly play up to the camera if they spot you aiming a lens at them. I noticed this the first time when I was in Anerica. I was at a blues festival in Arkansas, and there were some heavyweight artists playing on smaller stages.

At first I was very wary of standing out and drawing attention to myself, but one of them saw me pointing my camera at him. He swaggered over before giving a sly grin and then playing a mean harmonica riff right in my lens.

So, in this scenario being more conspicuous definitely was beneficial.

I think one of the key things for me is not to remain static. I keep moving around looking for angles, and try and stay out of the audiences' way as much as possible. And if one of those positions happens to be in front of the lead singer just as he/she bursts into a full expressive yell, I need to be ready to capture the moment quickly and make sure I don't overstay my welcome.

Also, I'll drop my camera to my hip and have a boogie for a bit; bands seem to appreciate that.

Separating Subjects on Stage

One of the things I appreciate in live music photographs of musicians, whether it’s a picture that I've taken or by another photographer, is separation. What I mean by that is isolating the subject from other objects or band members in the photograph. Microphone stands, speaker cabs and lighting rigs are all static on-stage objects that are easier to shoot around than other musicians. And to me separation is especially important in photographs focussing on singers faces’, when they are singing into microphones.

In this instance I like to see the singer’s mouth, and if there is space between the microphone and the mouth, even better. Some musicians have skilled microphone technique, and this can help us photographers when taking photographs of them. This is because the singer will generally follow a pattern in a song when they are close to the microphone, and when they move away from it. We can anticipate these moments and ready ourselves for when it comes around again.

It’s a difficult shot to get right because the singer is normally at their most expressive when singing at full volume into their microphone, and expression is one of the main things that I'm looking for as a music photographer.

Sometimes, if you’re patient, lucky, or both, the singer will move away from the microphone when singing. Or, in the case of Ty Taylor from Vintage Trouble in the photograph, the singer will completely back off the microphone and belt out an enormous yell at full force showing the full extent of their expression.

Glastonbury Tor BST -1

So, with next week's Glastonbury festival on my mind (1st time for me), I remembered this film I made 3 years ago on the day before the clocks went forward to signal the beginning of British Summer Time (BST).

I drove with Woo to Glastonbury Tor from my home in Bristol. It was the first time I'd been there. I took my time-lapse camera and home-made tripod mount (see photo - more on this soon), with the intention of catching the sun rising over the Tor. We didn't get there in time to see the sunrise - we were about an hour late. But it was still early enough to catch the low sunlight rising behind the Tor. It was a beautiful morning.

It's difficult to tell that the film is a time-lapse at the start; it looks like a standard rotational pan shot. However, if you look carefully at the sheep in the field, you can see them scuttling about at speed. The Tor makes an early appearance in the form of a shadow in a distant field and you can see it move ever so slightly as time passes.

The highlights in the film for me are the two labradors that came bounding over to see what all the fuss was about, and the large dog that showed up right on time at the end with its owner. I slowed this down in the film to add effect.

The music in the film is by Phillip Henry, who I saw play with the fantastic Hannah Martin at the Priddy Folk festival in 2011 and bought all their albums. Strangely enough I have a connection at the festival this year and hopefully I'll get to meet them both and pay Phillip for using a small piece of his song - Snow Dove, in the film.

The Elusive Available Light

After photographing bands indoors for a few months, it’s a relief to have an abundance of available light to play around in again. I have to work harder indoors because I'm always struggling for light to keep my shutter speed high enough to avoid motion blur. I don’t like using flash because it ruins the mood for me and blinds the band.

Conversely, bright sunshine is equally difficult to work with because of the high contrast between bright highlights and dark shadows.

The light on Saturday in St Werburghs was perfect for me if not for the crowd. There was enough of it, and it was really flat which meant I didn't have to keep messing with my controls and could just focus on the action. High shutter speeds allowed me to freeze the action as you can see in this photo of Toby Bang which was shot at 1/250th sec at f2.8. Indoors, I’m lucky to get 1/60th of a second even with the ISO boosted to 6400.

Despite all the light, it's still difficult to freeze those sticks.