Big Sound 2009 – Thursday | This Is Not A Photo Opportunity

Big Sound 2009 – Thursday

Big Sound 2009 Conference

Thursday morning was another morning off from photographing the conference, when I again got to sit in and listen to the talks, with my stint starting in the afternoon session. Again, the Keynote Interviews were the highlight, particularly Everett True‘s interview with Danny Goldberg.

Photographing the sessions was generally quite straightforward; a combination of wide-angle shots and changing to the zoom lens to get some more close up shots of the parcipitants. The hardest sessions to photograph were the small Master Classes, where everyone was sat around a large table, with the smallness of the room making your presence a lot more noticeable and where a very wide-angle lens would have been very useful.

After one of sessions, when there was a break for coffee I saw Van Dyke Parks and Robert Schneider chatting to each other and took a quick candid photo. Having been caught in the process by one of the conference’s PR people, she asks me if I can get a proper photo of the two of them together, with Van Dyke Parks then suggesting that I go up the stairs so that I’m above them and can get an overview shot of the two of them in the foreground with everyone else milling about in the back ground. Being given creative direction by Van Dyke Parks is definitely one of highlights of my photographic ‘career’. In retrospect I should have gotten the flash out and done a much better job, but for speed just decided to bump up the ISO, which wasn’t the cleverest of ideas given how dark it was where they were stood but how light it was behind them, thanks to the huge windows. Still, there’s always next time, right?

Robert Schneider + Van Dyke Parks

Later on in the day I also get a request to take a couple of quick photo of Robert Schneider with Mike Haydon, the drummer from The Middle East, one of which later gets printed in Rolling Stone Australia.

Robert Schneider + Mike Haydon

Thursday night follows a similar pattern to Wednesday; there’s a conference showcase at Artisan for soundslikebrisbane.com, featuring sets by Giants of Science (with Robert Schneider in front checking them out), Vegas Kings, My Fiction and Steve Grady and then another twelve bands across three venues over the evening. Again it was a case of only staying to see each band for about 10 or so minutes, but the evening’s definite highlight was Hunz (whose excellent second album you can download for free from his website, with Emma-Louise also putting on a really good performance at X&Y. Final band of the night was [Me], who were very perplexing and who I couldn’t work out if were really good or really terrible.

A selection of the best photos on Flickr and all the conference photos are on the Big Sound website.

[Me]