For a long time I’ve been interested in time-lapse photography and stop motion animation with normal still cameras.
Back in 2004, when I was doing my part-time two year photography course at SCOLA, I did a couple of my projects based on these topics.
For one project I looked to make a music video using still photos for My First Knife Fight, a London band that I had used for another of my photography projects in the first year of my course. I was looking to create something akin to Michel Gondry’s video for the Rolling Stones’ cover of ‘Like A Rolling Stone‘.
In preparation for what I had in mind I did some test shots with my friend Wim. The test shots were done on a film camera, which proved somewhat problematic as the camera continuous film advance kept sticking as the film wound on and so the interval between shots became a bit more irregular. The camera should have been able to do 3 Frames Per Second (FPS) but with these problems the FPS kept varying. This would have made it problematic in terms of syncing the images to be in time with the music. And doing all of this on a film camera, I didn’t have the luxury of being able to delete and try again, like you would have with a digital camera these days, but did have the expense of using film and the time that it required to develop the film and scan the negatives in…
I scanned in the negatives for the best sequence of still photos that I managed to get during the test shots and imported them into Macromedia Director in order to animate the stills. When played normally the motion was very jerky.
In order to smooth the animation I overlaid the photos in Director’s timeline, i.e. the first photo overlapped the second photo slightly in the timeline, the second overlapped the third etc. Then I set the transparency of each photo to fade out as the next photo in the sequence faded in. The effect was a lot more successful and more in mind with what I was looking to achieve.
However, the band were having issues and about to split, so nothing ever came of taking what I had learnt during the test shots and doing a shoot to get the images for a full video.
As a result, I just ended up using a whole load of still images that I had taken of the band over the course of a year and putting them to music so that I could finish the project for my course. I was waiting on the band to provide me with an mp3 of one of their songs to use but it didn’t eventuate before the band split. Needing a song to complete the project, and this being in the days before every band had a Myspace page with some of their songs on it, I scoured as many random and little known songs as I could find in order to get a song I could pass off as a My First Knife Fight song to accompany the video.
I eventually found a song that was quite short, at well under 3 minutes (and so cut down my workload), had a grungy sound like My First Knife Fight and, coming from a friend in London’s Triple J Hottest 100 compilation, would be largely unknown in the UK. Trouble is that I moved to Australia in mid-2004 and ‘Berlin Chair‘ by You Am I is slightly better known here than in the UK… In putting the final video together I did a series of tests to sort out the best method to use. Below is the final trial and the method that I ended up using for the full video. There are a couple of mistakes in this test but it gives an idea of what the final video looked like.
Although I started off this theme of blog postings with Steve Gullick, that was largely as a result of his new exhibition in London and the associated interviews and write-ups that he was getting. Although he is one of my favourite music photographers, the true number one spot should go to a photographer who I only became aware of in the last few years, Herman Leonard.
As with myself, most music photographers seem to be completely unaware of Herman Leonard, even though they might have seen his work in print. I think that this is largely due to having moved in slightly different circles by photographing jazz musicians, meaning that he flies under the radar of most ‘rock’ music photographers. In addition, I think the fact that he started photographing in the 1940s means his work largely pre-dates the music photography of the 1960s of classic rock bands that photographers associate with as the starting point of music photography.
He used a large-format camera with sheet film, a world away from the digital technology that most photographers now use, and by using a large-format camera, the level of detail in his photos is amazing.
He did have one advantage over most modern day photographers in that a lot of his photographs were taken at rehearsals/sound checks, allowing him to bring and set up his own lights and not rely on the venues own lights, or more likely the lack of light.
But that should in no way take away from his work, which is truly exquisite and completely awe inspiring.
What I’ve tried to take from him is his portrait style of photographing and also the beauty of monochrome; I still convert probably the vast majority of photos to black and white or convert and tone them even when they look good in colour, and even photos taken in daylight. There’s just something about black and white that can take a good colour photos and amplify the results substantially by converting it to a monochrome image.
By chance I was re-checking out his website late in 2006 and saw that he was doing at book signing of his new book ‘Jazz, Giants and Journeys: The Photography of Herman Leonard’ at Book Soup in LA and that you could order a copy over the internet. So have a nice signed copy on my shelf, as seen in the photo at the top of the page.
However, I also picked up a copy of one of his previous books, ‘Eye of Jazz’, on eBay cheaply and if you can get hold of it, I really recommend you do so, as it’s fantastic and soley devoted to his music photography, whereas ‘Jazz, Giants and Journeys’ is a mix of his music, travel and portrait photography.
There’s a really good 30 minute interview Herman did at San Diego’s KPBS radio on their website, here.
Hope I’m sounding that good and being that passionate about photography when I’m 84…
Danica and Andrea from new Brisbane band The Holy Bible came around for a Sunday afternoon photo-shoot for some promo shots.
This was the first time that I had used the new lighting set-up in anger so was a pretty exciting time. I had planned on being really prepared and having everything ready for when they arrived but made the mistake of going to Westfield in Chermside to buy a new mobile, got hopelessly lost, and took over 20 minutes to find where I parked my car when I came out of the building… So it was then a bit of a panic when I finally got back.
I used a similar setting to some of my test shots for a high-key set-up, with a softbox on the background and a reflector on the other side of the room to bounce some of this light back onto the backdrop and a shoot-through umbrella on the mezzanine level balcony as the key light. We also did some other set-ups and did some shots with a black background, although I prefer the initial set of photos.
The lighting worked quite well, especially for blowing out the creases on the fabric backdrop/floor. There is a bit of blow out on Danica as she was stood closer to the light lighting the backdrop. Next time I try this set-up I will have to move it a bit further around and closer to the backdrop or maybe put a gobo between the light and the subject. Also in the initial panic and rush to get everything set up I forgot to change the ISO setting on my camera from the last gig I was at, so despite using my flash meter to meter for ISO 200 I ended up doing some of the first photos at ISO 800. Doh…
I probably should airbrush Danica’s legs… God knows what she did to get all those bumps and bruises… looks like she fell out of a tree and then rolled down a mountain… But that’s a job for another time…
All in all a good, fun afternoon and I was pretty happy with how it went for my first shoot. Hopefully the first of many.
Monday night gigs are strange affairs; they’re quite a rare occurrence – indeed a fair number of bars and pubs are shut every Monday in Brisbane - and yet they bring out the most devoted and passionate fans. It’s a different vibe to a more typical Thursday, Friday or Saturday night show when there are usually more scenesters, fair-weather fans and hangers-on in the crowd on a normal night out. So whilst The Zoo was maybe only a third full for tonight’s visit of Biffy Clyro - a bit of a surprise considering that their latest album, ‘Puzzle’, reached #2 in the UK album charts and they are the Saturday night headlining act on the John Peel Stage at Glastonbury in June - there was a really great and friendly atmosphere.
In addition to the rare occurrence of a Monday night gig, there was also the even rarer occasion of a cold Zoo, a venue renown for its unbearable summer temperatures, with the gig happening on what was being predicted as the coldest April night in Brisbane in 25 years. However, a cold night in Brisbane is obviously a veritable heatwave in Scotland, with singer/guitarist Simon and drummer Ben both playing the whole of their set shirtless.
Most reviews/interviews of the band tend to include a comparison to Nirvana, but other than the fact they’re a 3-piece, play rock and rock hard there’s not much in their sound that has an obvious grunge influence. There are, however, much more obvious prog tendencies in their sound; it’s a lot more intricate than band like Nirvana and more in common with someone like Tool or even Rush.
Latest Dew Process signings Yves Klein Blue supported and were ok, if maybe a little lightweight as support band for a band like Biffy Clyro. Can’t help but feeling that they’ve got too much of that Libertines, slightly jazz minor 7th thing going on a lot of their songs and that it sounds far too 2002 to make an impact in 2008. They were pretty tight though, so time will tell.
A few more photos on flickr.
Biffy Clyro
Yves Klein Blue
I wrote in a blog last year about the joys of photographing The Mess Hall, in particular Cec and his photogenic drumming skills. The album launch last year was a disappointing affair, with very little light being stuck in a poor position to photograph from. When the Brisbane date in support of their latest single ‘Pulse’ was announced I couldn’t help but see it as a chance for redemption, even though it was at The Zoo with its very hit-and-miss lighting.
As has been a recent event at The Zoo, the gig was mostly backlit, with some lower power red AND pink lighting from the front. With backlit conditions similar to the recent JAMC gig, I experimented a bit more with wider angle shots (using my new-ish but very little used, AU$165 absolute bargain 28 – 70 f2.8 lens) and photographing directly into the light. I was trying to get something more than just a normal silhouette-type image and make the actual lighting an integral part of the photo. It’s a bit hit-and-miss, especially with lens flare, but when it works I think it works well. The general quality of the lens is fantastic but it is a bit slow to focus and it under-exposes by over ½ stop – which makes it less than ideal for photographing concerts…
And of course took some more close-up shots of Cec… which are ok but would have benefited from more front light and being able to use a higher shutter speed and less back light causing the annoying glare when I changed side to get the really close-up shots.
Main support band were The Scare. They weren’t bad, better than had seen them before but seemed to be a lot less energetic than the past, especially Kiss Reid, who seemed very sedated all night and almost apologetic for their last appearance at The Zoo in 2006 before they moved to the UK. So much for hating us all…
Violent Soho opened the night and were as good as ever. About time they got around to releasing another CD…
Lots more photos on flickr.
Having recently released their third album (and a double album to boot) ‘Junk’ to wide critical acclaim, Brisbane’s own Gin Club rolled back into town to wrap up the album launching 15 date tour that had started in Hobart some 22 days earlier
The queue outside The Globe went around the block so At Sea had already by the time we got in. It’s safe to say that the Walker sisters (At Sea singer Lauren and Butcher Birds’/Young Doctors‘ Jacinta) have got the Cute Gene. As to which is the cuter, it’s hard to say…
Possibly less cute, but astonishingly spell-binding was Gareth Liddiard’s solo set. A mix of old Drones songs and new/possibly Drones songs-to-be played on an acoustic guitar to an audience dumbstruck in awe. Really powerful stuff that needed the lighter, jokier between song banter to prevent the evening descending into a well of doom and despair.
His Drones’ bandmate Mike Noga, with band The Gentlemen of Good Fortune, was next up with a solid, if unspectacular set of county-tinged rock drinking songs.
And so to The Gin Club.
Having seen The Gin Club plenty of times over the last couple years, the changing around of instruments after songs can take the momentum away from the performance and sometimes the setlist order has seemed to have caused a mid-gig lull with slow, quiet, acoustic songs. However, tonight they are a well oiled machine (despite Salty’s lost bottle of tequila…), helped by the changes to the band’s line-up and the introduction of a more permanent drummer for most songs and no doubt helped by being the last date of the tour. In addition, the new album seems more up tempo than the last album which gives an overall improvement in the dynamics of the set. All this, combined with a set of new and really, really good songs, meant that it was the best show that I’ve seen them play.
A great night all round, despite the issues with the venue and their curfew meaning that they had to curtail their set a few songs short.
The new album is really fantastic and should bring them the success that they richly deserve. You really should buy a copy and go see them next time they play.
A gazillion more photos on flickr.
Brisbane alt-country-folk supergroup Dead Set Love, featuring members of Texas Tea, Horrortones, Vegas Kings, Mean Streaks and Shiskin & Choomby recorded some demos on a Saturday afternoon back in February at Urban Humm Studios in West End. By the time I arrived at 2pm they were already a bottle of tequila down…
I should have known better than to not bring a flash or any lighting, as once again it was a tiny, cramped, hot room, with no natural light, lit by a single low watt bulb. I’m starting to think that stylish, sparse wooden panelled rooms, overlooked from the control room through big glass windows only happen in the movies…
Having been in Mildura when Brisbane’s Andy Warhol exhibition at GoMA started in December, with a set of Velvet Underground covers by Robert Forester, I was able to make the closing night show, which featured a 45 minute set by Wolfmother.
Times have changed since I first photographed Wolfmother back in May 2004 at The Hopetoun in Sydney. Back then they were the opening band on a bill with The Ross Orbit Stack and Vanlustbader headlining. This was their fifth ever gig and the first gig that I photographed in Australia, using a single roll of HP4 for the whole gig and only taking 6 or 7 shots of Wolfmother… Before there were afros, ipod adverts, double-neck Gibsons and Grammy Awards they looked like this:
As with any gig at The Hopetoun no one battered an eyelid at me taking photos; this time there was a contract to sign, the bottom of which was torn off and was given to the photographers as a receipt. One of the clauses was that I had to provide any photos that I might have taken if the band’s management requested me to do so. No mention of payment or anything. Based on recent experience, it feels like this is becoming a standard clause on concert photography contracts.
Although the $20 included entry to the exhibition, which closed off just before the band started, the place seemed fairly empty until the last half an hour. By the time they came on stage the place was packed. The set included some new songs, which made a bit of a change considering they have been playing the same set for much of the last four years. Although Andrew Stockdale has apparently been recording demos with Resin Dogs’ drummer Dave Atkins it hasn’t heralded a move away from a 1970s rock sound into hip-hop… The song definitely remains the same…
The fact that this was their first gig in 9 months really showed. They were pretty ragged, especially Andrew Stockdale’s voice, which was all over the place and coming nowhere near hitting the high notes. Still, the crowd lapped it up as you’d expect, even a pretty woeful cover of Lou Reed’s ‘Perfect Day‘, with Mick Ronson’s string arrangement replaced by widdly-widdly guitar playing…
There was a photo pit at the front but it was very crowded, with about ten photographers and four or five burly security guys. Additionally, lighting didn’t seem as good as when I photographed Buck 65 at one of the first ‘Up Late’ gigs. And on top of that I just seemed to be having one of those nights when my timing kept being off…
More photos on flickr.
I have been recently drafting a blog for future publication about some of my favourite music photographers. However, I saw that one of the biggest influences on my photography, Steve Gullick, has got an exhibition on at the moment in the Rough Trade East shop in London.
As such, there are quite a few recent articles about it on the internet, best of which is the downloadable podcast on The Quietus, a great new music website with loads of old UK music paper writers from back when the UK music papers were a good read. Although they’ve put playable sound clips throughout the article, they’ve been taken from the full interview, so I recommend you just download the whole 32MB, 46 minute podcast. You get to hear all about photographing David Yow’s rectum and what he really thinks about Anthony Kiedis and Lars Ulrich…
I guess I was lucky to grow up in an age when at various times he was photographing for Sounds, NME and Melody Maker. It’s hard to believe it when you look at his work and you look at NME (the only weekly music paper left in the UK) now.
After leaving the mainstream music press he struck out with former Melody Maker writer Everett True and together they started their own music magazine, ‘Careless Talk Costs Lives‘.
What I love about CTCL is the thinking - you could almost call it a manifesto - that lay behind their intentions; to bring down the UK music press with twelve issues of a bi-monthly magazine that counted down from 12 to 1 and then ended.
In the final issue Everett True wrote:
Don’t mourn for us. We set out what we intended to do. Exist for 12 issues, and stop. Prove that it’s possible to put together a great magazine with few resources, aside from enthusiasm and talent and a passion for music. Cover the music we love in a manner we felt was befitting - words unhampered by thoughts of shifting units, photography that never once resorted to gimmickry, illustrations that burned with a desire to communicate. Our design was clear and bold, rooted in the belief that we were proud of our words and photography and illustrations, and that we had no desire to hide them behind ’sexy’ layouts and lurid headlines. No press photos. No ringtone adverts. No full-stand displays in WH Smiths. No consideration for content beyond that we were listening to, and moved by at the time.
So we didn’t bring down the UK music press.
We still fervently believe we’re right.
This whole approach strikes a huge chord with me.
As does Steve Gullick’s photography. It’s beautiful, emotive, evocative, gritty, dirty, passionate, vibrant, compelling, strong, iconic; it’s everything photography should be and what I strive to do with my own photography. It’s an antidote to the throwaway images in the mainstream music papers that are just tomorrow’s chip papers. When you look at something like Getty Images’ music photos, it’s just pretty horrible stuff; are there really photographers whose goal in life is to be a Getty photographer? It would bore me to death; if photographic blandness could kill, photo agencies like Getty would be the prime suspects.
If you’ve liked what you’ve seen so far of Steve Gullick’s work, I thoroughly recommend his book ‘Showtime’. If you’re cheap (like me…) you can get it from www.oldies.com for a bargain price of US$3.95 (+P&P…)
Quickly following on from last week’s JAMC show, there was another blast of seminal 1980s proper indie noise this week courtesy of ex-Spaceman 3 co-frontman Sonic Boom in his Spectrum guise. Until I moved to Brisbane my most seen live band was Spiritualized (8 times) – the band formed and fronted by Sonic’s ex-Spaceman 3 bandmate, Jason Pierce. However, despite that achievement, I had never actually seen Sonic before. (Incidentally, my current record for most seen live band is probably a close tussle between Sixfthick and tonight’s opening support band, Butcher Birds. Although I don’t have the advantage of being able to see Spiritualized every week at Ric’s…)
Straight from the start of the set there were technical issues from the tangle of leads and power supply units, resulting in signals not getting out from the table of instruments and effects.
When he told the audience that this was as good as it got it was hard to tell if he was joking or not, but the continuing self-deprecating comments and the look on his face told you he wasn’t having the best of times. On stage sound issues weren’t helping things (the front of house sound wasn’t too hot either, played at a really low volume, prompting one member of the audience to shout “turn the PA on…I mean up”) and resulted in before-song, after-song and even during-song vitriol emanating from the stage in the direction of the soundman for the duration of the gig. Sonic got support band Dimmer back on stage for a run through of the Spaceman 3 track ‘Suicide’. At the end of the song, whilst the last notes were still reverberating the soundman started up the background cd over the PA system…. A revenge of sorts, I guess.
Personally, I thought the crowd reaction was pleasing; people seemed to be willing him to pull the show out from the flames during his set and there was no shortage of people wanting to shake his hand and say thanks for coming at the end even though it was a real train-wreck of a gig. Despite all the setbacks, there was a degree of redemption at the end, with ‘Suicide’ giving everyone a glimpse of what the whole show might have been like on another night. Hopefully he has more luck with his Sydney and Melbourne shows (with reports of those gigs indicating that that was the case) and that Brisbane will get another chance of seeing the show that everyone was hoping for in the future.
It was pretty dark, with only a couple of lights (both red…), plus some light from the OHP being used to create the psychedelic backdrop effect. The photos aren’t that great, but I’ve put a few more photos on flickr.