Although I wouldn’t strictly describe Anton Corbijn as a music photographer, even though it was where he started, his photography has always been a huge inspiration and has a large part to play in me wanting to do music photography.

U2 were the first band I really got into and saw in concert, Cardiff Arms Park in 1987 when they were on The Joshua Tree tour. I took a small camera (a Kodak Disc Camera from memory) and have some really bad photos of them and the support bands (The Pretenders and The Alarm) from miles away from the stage, where they are just little dots on the stage, and most of the photo is the back of the heads of the people in front of me…

The cover for ‘The Unforgettable Fire’ always mesmerised me as the photography was just so beautiful (I realised later when I started getting into photography properly that it was done with black and white infrared film), even though half of it is blurry and out of focus. And the same with the ‘Joshua Tree’ album artwork photos; they were (and are) amazing.

At that first gig, by the time that I went to get a t-shirt they had sold out, so I ended up getting a programme, which was full of other photos that were taken when they were out in the desert doing the photos that ended up on the album artwork. So my first bit of proper band memorabilia was a book of photos.

Although I still have that program, I treated myself to a more up-to-date and flashy version a couple of years ago and bought his book ‘U2 and I’ as a birthday present to myself.

I’ve always liked the simplicity of his photos; there’s nothing complicated or flash about his images, there’s no use of elaborate props for the most part. There’s also a seriousness about his images and if photography is about stealing people’s souls I don’t think anyone does it better than Anton Corbijn. I’ve also always liked his use of individual portraits of band members and also his use of alternate printing processes, especially his use of lith printing, both of which I’ve looked to take into my own photos.

On their last tour I was offered the photo op to photograph U2 when they played in Brisbane. However, this opportunity was emailed me and I only had a 20 minute window to get back to them to say if I was available to do it. I was at work but away from my computer and by the time I got back I was too late; the chance had been and gone. It was a really devastating experience. I’d waited 20 years for this - the chance to photograph the first band I really got into, the first band I saw in concert, and whose photos had been hugely influential on my photography. What was especially depressing about the whole thing was that the publication who offered it to me had my mobile number and had used it previously to contact me about things like photographing The Presets. Yet they offered me the opportunity to photograph just about the world’s biggest band, took the chance that I would be sat in front of a computer and able to quickly respond, and so emailed me.

Afterwards I emailed the promoter and pretty much begged for the chance, even saying that I was going down to Sydney to see them (on the Monday night, their third Sydney date) so if there were any available photographer places I could photo them in Brisbane or Sydney, but no dice. Guess there’s always next time…

Another last minute request to cover a show, this time the second night of the 4ZZZ Tater Stomp at The Troubadour.

Like most photographers I am a very wary Troubadour photographer and it comes bottom of the list for requesting shows to cover unless it’s someone that I really, really want to see. Whilst it’s a fantastic venue and post-gig drinking hole, the lighting, even at its very best, is usually really terrible. Sometimes you hit lucky, like I did the last time I photographed here and Bill Callahan was stood in exactly the right place to have some good quality light shining on him, sometimes you don’t, with photographing the Nation Blue last year springing to mind, where ISO 1600, f1.7, and 1/25 was still giving me chronic underexposure and a set of unusable photos.

I photographed the last two acts on Saturday night; Dick Desert And The Shotgun Country Club and Texas Kate. The lighting was average/typical Troubadour fare; my settings were around ISO800, f2.8, 1/50.

The only previous time that I’d seen Dick Desert was a solo show at a Trash Video fundraiser at The Rev all the way back in December 2005. It’s strange that it’s been so long as he’s previously personally requested that Rave send me to photograph when they’ve been covering him; from memory I think once I was away and another time the gig was cancelled last minute.

Was great to see him play again, and Saturday’s show with the Shotgun Country Club was a really fun show of the punk country that Brisbane does so well.

It was also great to see Texas Kate and catch up with her about the recent Texas Tea European tour. Really looking forward to their new album which is out in November; I did some photos for Mess & Noise when they were recording it last November and it’s just been far too long for something so good to remain under wraps.

Some more photos on Flickr.

It was a night that had it all: drinks, drugs, fighting, guys mopping up their own blood, girls mopping up their own blood, police cars and ambulances outside at the end of the night… And somewhere in the midst of all that Cut Copy played a gig to a sell out Tivoli crowd.

The night started early with NZ band Shocking Pinks playing to a tiny and mostly disinterested crowd. The room was more than empty enough for ironic, theatrical dancing from a small group to their very 1990 shoegazing sound. The band also played in near darkness, with only a couple of spot lights at the back of the stage.

It’s annoying when you turn up early to check out support bands and you end up with the feeling that they’re not being given much of chance to impress. Whilst people are generally playing for the headline act and, as a result, they are rightly given more time to soundcheck and generally have better sound and a more impressive light show, you sometimes get the feeling that there is almost an element of sabotage to ensure that there is no way that the support acts could ever upstage the headliners.

Whilst the ever increasing price of drinking at gigs is probably taking away from people wanting to get to venues early (for example, the obscene $11 that The Tivoli is now charging for a bottle of Smirnoff Black), I always try to get there to check out the support bands – you never when you might discover something really good or where they might end up a few years down the line. Down the years, support bands I’ve seen have included Radiohead (twice), Tool, Soundgarden, Faith No More, You Am I, Travis, Wolfmother, Primus, and Mercury Rev to name a few.

“The” Juan Maclean were the main support band. For a band playing “happy house” dance music with Theremin and cowbell they were distinctly motionless and seemingly uninterested in trying to engage with the audience. They also played in near darkness, with my photos being so rubbish that there’s nothing I’d really want to put up for public viewing.

I saw Cut Copy at the V Festival earlier in the year, albeit from a distance, and thought they sounded like New Order. Seeing them close up they still sound like New Order. Their latest album, In Ghost Colours, has been garnering rave reviews from the likes of DiS and Pitchfork, although having heard a number of songs I can’t work out why; it’s OK and fairly harmless stuff but just not THAT good.

Live, they put on a really good show. The sound and lights were great (although I ended up disappointed with the shots I got of them overall; lots of back light, not enough from the front) and they really connected with the audience. As such, it was strange that the night ended up with all the aggro and bloodshed.

Some more photos on Flickr.

The final additions to the 2008 Splendour In The Grass festival were announced recently, to go with the already announced list that I blogged about here, with the final 21 bands being as follows:

The Polyphonic Spree
The Drones
Bluejuice
Lyrics Born
New Young Pony Club
Yves Klein Blue
Tokyo Police Club
Little Red
Clare Bowditch
Robert Forster
Hadouken!
Bliss n Eso
Albert Hammond Jr
Paul Dempsey
Katalyst
Even
British India
The Galvatrons
Delta Spirit
Slot Machine
The Black Stars

One thing’s for sure, it’s no 2006 line-up, my only previous trip to the festival. It’s no 2005 line-up either.  Or 2004.  Or 2003… Overall it’s a very disappointing line-up.  I presumed with The Breeders playing in Brisbane on the Monday after the festival that they would be playing, which would have been one plus point from the final announcement, but it seems not, unless they’re going to announce them as a ‘surprise’ last minute act.

Usually with Fuji Rock being the previous weekend their line-up is usually a good guide to who will be playing at Splendour, but not this year it seems, with the Fuji Rock line-up being far superior, both musically and from a photographic point of view.

The playing times don’t get published until a week or so before the festival so I’ll have to wait until then to start planning the weekend and who I’m going to photograph with military precision.

I have previously photographed 13 of the 47 bands playing:

Wolfmother (and seen/photographed them waaaaay too many times…)
The Presets
The Grates
Operator Please
Van She
The Panics
Mstrkrft
The Gin Club
The Drones
Lyrics Born
New Young Pony Club
Yves Klein Blue
Robert Forster

Whilst I plan on photographing a number of those bands again, I’m open to suggestions as to other bands that I have to see/have to photograph so feel free to tell me who I must go and check out.

Got one of my Biffy Clyro photos in the latest edition of Blunt magazine, the one with The Living End and Foxboro Hot Tubs on the front cover (#71). It’s always good getting a telephone call requesting a photo from a publication that you’ve not been published in before. So yay for me.

May was a bit of a lean month for photographing gigs, not helped by Cosmic Psychos cancelling their tour and Rave not being able to get a reviewer for Don Letts, both of which I was down to cover.

And things haven’t improved much in June, with Barry Adamson, who I was really looking forward to seeing, cancelling his show at The Zoo due to “unavoidable promotional commitments”, my emailed requests for the first week of the month – The Thrills at The Zoo and I Killed The Prom Queen - being missed when the gigs were assigned, and no one wanting to review Angus and Julia Stone. However, no one requested to photograph Powderfinger at The Tivoli and so having been offered it and having never seen Powderfinger before thought “what the hell, why not?”

So, I get to The Tivoli and find out that I’m only down to photograph support act Whitley… So I photograph Whitley for my allotted three songs (one of which lasts about a minute) and he plays solo, sat on a stool, singing with his eyes shut…

The lovely Tivoli desk staff try to find someone to ok it for me to photograph Powderfinger, and about 2 minutes before they come up I get a call from the PR to say that as long as I signed the contract then I’m good to photograph. So yay for that.

The downside of photographing tonight is that they’re filming it for live broadcast to Big Pond mobile phones, with the full gig also being available for download the following day (for the bargain price of $2.95 I believe….). As such, the photo pit and the stairs are off limits to allow camera men to move around and so we get to photograph from a tiny bit of space at the bottom of the stairs, right against the stage. Although it’s a very side-on view, and means that there’s not the variety in angles that you would normally get from photographing from a photo pit, the worst thing is that the view of singer Bernard Fanning is largely blocked by guitarist Darren Middleton’s mic stand… The gig has been split up into an “acoustic” and an “electric” section (note to Powderfinger: acoustic generally doesn’t mean electric bass and electric guitars…), with an interlude in the middle. Our three songs to photograph in were from the “acoustic” part of the set, meaning three songs of “stool rock” (amazingly there isn’t a wikipedia entry for Stool Rock…).

Much is made of Powderfinger in Australia; arguably they’ve been one of its biggest bands for much of the last 10 years. Being fairly new here, I’m not quite sure why. They’ve got that earnest, down to earth thing going on, they’re pretty competent musicians and seem like nice guys, but in trying to compare them to something from the UK I keep coming back to Del Amitri… or a less edgy Travis… whatever that is…

The recent Drowned In Sound review for Coldplay’s ‘Viva La Vida Or Death and All His Friends’ makes the comment that “…Coldplay remain resolutely no-brow, a rock band version of Jack Vettriano; art for people who don’t like art; crowd-pleasers for people who don’t like crowds; music for people who don’t like music”.

If that’s the case I’m not sure where it leaves bands like Powderfinger….

And on a related note, you can enjoy DiS’s review of Bernard Fanning’s ‘Wish You Well’, the Number 1 song in last year’s Triple J’s Hottest 100 (as voted by the Australian people as their favourite song of the year…), here.

Some more photos on flickr.

Last Friday I had a very last minute request to photograph Story Of The Year supported by The Audition at The Tivoli.  Whilst not being overly familiar with the band I know from having seen photos that they love their jumping.  Having had such a good time at Soundwave photographing jumping bands I couldn’t turn it down and was looking forward to the gig. So it was a real disappointment when both bands (I missed the first band who started at 7:15pm only 15 minutes after the doors opened…) played in very poor lighting, akin to somewhere between a night of poor lighting at The Zoo and a typical night’s lighting at The Troubadour.  So in the end I didn’t really end up with anything good, let alone any good jump shots.

It wasn’t just the low shutter speeds I was having to use, it was also the fact that so much of what was happening was happening inches away from my face and I couldn’t fit it all into frame.  Using my widest lens at 28mm with a 1.5x multiplier is 42mm in the real world, nowhere near wide enough, so I also ended up with loads of shots where I missed complete body parts…

After last week’s pleasant surprise of good lighting at The Zoo, when my camera coped well with the conditions, after this experience I can’t wait to get a full frame camera and hopefully one that’ll be able to manage over ISO 800 without looking like sludge…

Tax return time is almost upon us; hopefully they’ll be some additional funds this year to help finance some new toys…

There was no three song rule, although after probably 6 or so songs they did chuck us out of the photo pit.  It was occasionally hard work, as the pit was quite narrow and with four of five burly security guards standing in front of the stage made it a bit of a tight squeeze and also sometimes made it difficult to get the angle you wanted without getting a security guard in frame.  Additionally, with it being a narrow pit, crowd surfers coming over the barrier tended to mean that in the mêlée you ended up pinned against the stage.

Musically the bands were pretty forgettable. It’s not even that old age is kicking in and all these bands sound the same but more like they just sound like some weak, unadventurous 1980s bog standard rock band; so much for the angry youth of today…  Somewhat strangely there were ongoing chants of ‘Aussie, Aussie, Aussie’ throughout the night; you’d think that teenage emo kids and Australian nationalistic tendencies would be mutually exclusive but it’s obviously not the case.  You wouldn’t have put them down for secret Daily Mail reading types…

More photos on flickr.

The Audition

 

Story Of The Year

I have set up a Twitter account at http://twitter.com/jxe520

To be honest I still don’t really get Twitter or consider it that useful in most situations. Whilst I can see some benefits for very established bloggers or very famous people whose exciting lives could probably cope with 140 character regular updates, I think, as with other such Web 2.0 applications, there are a number of obvious flaws:

1. The practice of micro-blogging uses a model of quantity over quality in order to maintain fresh content;
2. it’s the Web 2.0 equivalent of sending SMSs to people you don’t know;
3. If you’ve got something worthwhile to say it probably needs more than 140 characters to say it;
4. Having read a few people’s Twitter feed it generally seems to be of the “eating a sandwich” or “watching a film” ilk;
5. When new ways of communicating through the internet are released there is a process of early adopting tech bloggers writing about the merits of the new system and their “followers” quickly adopting, making it a self-fulfilling path to the application eventually being picked up by the mainstream; and
6. Having reached mainstream it just becomes a method for spamming, as seen by the likes of Myspace these days, where I seem to be spending more and more time deleting spam and porn from my inbox.

So, having said all that why am I bothering with Twitter? I’m still looking at live or as near as live blogging for my weekend at Splendour In The Grass in August. However, although the timetable doesn’t come out until about a week for the festival I’m not sure how much free time I would have available during the day to download and process photos, upload them to Flickr, and then write the words for the related blog and add in the links and photos. Although I expect there to be some free time during the day, with three stages on the go I’m not expecting there to be long enough gaps during the day to live blog. Plus, given the choice between blogging or photographing, my time is probably best spent photographing as much as I can fit into the day and doing the blogging after the bands have finished for the day and early the following day.

However, by having Twitter it gives me an option to micro-blog 140 character reviews of the bands and the day in general as I run between stages, which can then act as notes for the more in depth blogging that I prefer to do.

So feel free to “follow” me for all the latest news and reviews from the site, with more in depth thoughts and pictures following later in the day. At some point soon I’ll be modifying this site to publish my Twitter feed directly here.

My friend Danica from The Holy Bible called me up again about doing a photo shoot for another band she’s in, The Lonely Coming Down. It’s the law in Brisbane that if you play in a band, you have to have to be in at least one other band… (The best example of this is probably Tony Giacca who plays in Sixfthick and Side Effects and Young Doctors and Horrortones… and was also in Gentle Ben & His Sensitive Side for a bit until he realised he was just in too many bands… at which point he passed on the bass playing duties to Dan Baebler. Who also plays in Sixfthick and Side Effects…)

Anyway, the brief from Danica for the Lonely Coming Down shots was ‘dark and brooding’.

I did have all these grand schemes and ideas for set-ups. Bill Henson had been in the news in recent days due to the controversy of his latest exhibition in Sydney, including police raids, threats of legal action and some unhelpful comments from the Australian PM, and as the lighting he uses in his photos has that ‘dark and brooding’ quality I was looking to try something similar.

However, it was pouring with rain, which would have made doing the shots I wanted to do outside by the river a bit problematic, so we just ended up doing some simple studio shots.

The set-up was very simple; a black background, one monobloc with a softbox positioned at the side and at about head height, and a black bounce on the far side, opposite the light.

We did a few 3/4 length and full length shots but as they liked the close-up shots best we concentrated on those more. We talked out trying a second lighting setup but they were happy with the photos we’d got; so it was all very quick and easy.

Typical camera settings were around ISO 200, f6.3, 1/200

For the post production I desaturated some of the photos, to give them more of a fashion look, and did some of the usual b+w conversions and toning as Danica had also asked for b+w images to fit in with the overall ‘dark and brooding’ look. I also had to use levels to darken the background and make it completely black as some light from the softbox had fallen on it.

The light on right hand side is nice and soft but is probably a bit too harsh closer to the light on the left hand side, even though the light was on minimum power. But generally I was pretty happy with the results overall and learnt from my mistakes for next time.

Even though I had too small a depth of field on the shot below, meaning that Danica is not in focus, I really like this photo. I think it’s out of focus enought to get away with it. It’s got a nice 1960s vibe about it and reminds me a bit of Herman Leonard’s photo of Nico.

And because editing down my photos to only show my very best shots is my greatest weakness, there are some more photos from the session on flickr.