This Is Not A Photo Opportunity

That Was The Year That Was 2008

2008 was another hectic year, which in photographic terms looked something like this:

1. Girl Talk
2. Buck 65
3. The National
4. Enter Shikari
5. The Police
6. Battles
7. Scul Hazards
8. Brisbane Sounds
9. Died Pretty
10. Soundwave
11. Broken Social Scene
12. Toto
13. Coco Rosie
14. The Brisbane Sound
15. Buffalo Tom
16. The Bellrays
17. Sinead O’Connor
18. Whitesnake
19. QOTSA
20. Jesus & Mary Chain
21. Spectrum
22. Wolfmother
23. Gin Club
24. Mess Hall
25. My Disco
26. Biffy Clyro
27. Rocket Science
28. Kate Miller-Heidke
29. The Audreys
30. Story of The Year
31. Powderfinger
32. Cut Copy
33. 4ZZZ Tater Stomp
34. redsunband
35. Mr Rascal
36. Splendour In The Grass
37. Robert Forster
38. Kim Salmon + The Surrealists
39. X
40. Sixfthick
41. Gentle Ben & His Sensitive Side
42. New Pornogarphers
43. We Are Scientists
44. Joan As Policewoman
45. Tim Finn
46. Def Leppard
47. Steve Earle
48. Texas Tea
49. John Mellencamp
50. Jeremy Jay
51. Pivot
52. Global Gathering
53. Saul Williams
54. MGMT
55. The Datsuns
56. MereNoise Xmas Party

At least that’s the bands/singers/festivals I turned up for and tried to photograph; I probably should have removed QOTSA from the list due to walking away from the contract they wanted me to sign and not making it into the venue, and also The National, whose tour manager decided that although I’d been cleared by the promoter, it should have referred it to him to approve, and so he wouldn’t let me photograph them. But even without those two gigs in the list I still managed to meet my target for the year of 52 gigs (i.e. an average of one a week), a not bad return considering the combination of working away and holidays meant that I was out of the city for about 8 weeks.   Interestingly, 21 of those gigs were at The Zoo, which, as last year, remains my venue of choice by a long way (The Tivoli was in 2nd place with 8 gigs).

On top of the gigs I photographed (or tried to) there’s another 14 gigs I went to as a non-photographing punter. Most of those were at Ric’s but also included Sufjan Stevens at the Tivoli, Iron Maiden at the BEC and Big Day Out, which I seem destined to never photograph and so will be there as a punter in 2009.  I guess there’s always 2010, right?

Photographic highlights of the year were (in no particular order):

• Photographing The Police, a band who were one of my earliest musical memories and my first stadium shoot;
• Being let loose on Splendour In The Grass, and the whole buzz of photographing a major 2-day festival (even if the line-up wasn’t that good this year compared to some of the previous years…); and
• Soundwave, which despite the woeful organisation and extreme 40+ degree heat was fun, although possibly more in retrospect…

Gig of the year was probably the non-photographing Iron Maiden gig at the BEC. I only decided very late on that I should go and managed to get a $50 ticket off eBay on the day of the gig. Even though the seat was in the very back row, as far from the stage as you could get it was still amazing. Hopefully I will get to photograph them some day… Other highlights were Def Leppard, Toto and Whitesnake; 2008 was obviously all about 1980s rock.

Musical lows of the year were probably all the mediocre-at-best bands at Splendour playing to full tents whilst all the good stuff went largely unoticed in the GW McLennan stage and the train-wreck that was Spectrum at The Step Inn. Photographic lows? Any gig with rubbish/no lighting, which was probably most of them…

And finally, personal favourite photos from the year include some of these:

It all kicks off again in the new year, with gigs by Stars, Black Keys/Gomez, All Tomorrow’s Parties at Mt Buller, Dead Meadow/Fuck Buttons and Bon Iver already in my diary to photograph in the first half of January.  So, there will be blogs, there will be tweets, and there will be photos.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 22nd, 2008 at 12:48 am. It is filed under Music Photography and tagged with 2008, Brisbane, Concert, Gig, Justin Edwards, live, Minolta 5D, Music Photography, Rave Magazine, www.notaphoto.com. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.