Catch Them Before They Turn Into Crosby, Southport, Formby and Heswall
The Montgomerys played the Totterdown music festival outside the Oxford pub last Sunday and it was a belter. Sam Whitlock - lead guitar and vocals, Philo Sinnett - rhythm guitar and vocals, Thomas Murdoch - bass and vocals, Ko Ristolainen - drums.
I've been following the band for yonks, since they started. They're a great bunch of lads and fine exponents of West Country Rock.
Catch them soon before they turn into er.... English north west coastal towns.
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.
New Album Artwork
Lewis Creaven's new album - Folkstar, sports a fine looking cover even if I say so myself. I took the portrait of Lewis late last year as part of an all day studio session with 6 other bands in a small studio in St Werburghs, Bristol.
Folkstar is only on sale at the moment at Lewis' gigs.
I went along to one of his shows on Sunday in Totterdown, and it was a cracker. At one point he picked up a bar stool in his left hand and started using it as a guitar slide. Absolutely hilarious and absolutely fantastic showmanship.
After the show Lewis handed me a copy of the new CD. I was surprised to see that he has used several of my other photographs of him in the liner booklet. He hadn't mentioned this before and it was thrilling to see.
One of the photographs in the liner booklet is a live shot from the Golden Lion. The others are from the same studio session, in which he is joined by Patrick Farrell, who plays bass guitar and upright on the album.
The CD is available to buy in regular outlets later in the summer.
New Ventures and All That
So here it is then. My new web site is finally up and running after several months of procrastinating.
www.johnnycajon.com is running a little bit light on content right now, but that will soon change as I make regular updates. Check back frequently or even subscribe to have updates delivered to you. Gotta figure out how that works but there is a big button here that suggests it is possible to do it.