A Day In The Life Of An Über Röck Photographer
Wednesday, 21 July 2010 05:00
I’m not a professional photographer. I don’t even have a Flickr account let alone an online portfolio (not counting my photos on Facebook). I may not be a professional photographer but I do take photography seriously. It’s a major hobby and a major love for me. I’m very critical of what I do and I strive to improve. I’m also striving to build up a body of work – a real portfolio if you will. I like taking pictures of everything – portraits of people, nature – animals and landscapes – and, of course, sweating men wrapped in demin and leather giving it their all on stage. So when I heard about the John Sicolo memorial gig that was being held not too far away in Newport I thought it an ideal opportunity to document the day. I’d frequented John Sicolo’s rock venue TJ’s for over 20 years. I’d played there with my own bands in a previous life, and also seen such great bands as Redd Kross, Rocket From The Crypt and The Wildhearts there. TJ’s was an important venue for acts on the local music scene too. Bands like the 60ft Dolls, Flyscreen and every other band in the Newport area. And they were all, in one form or another, coming together at this tribute concert. So I contacted the organisers and, like scores of others, volunteered my services free of charge for the day.
A few days before the gig I went online and researched the bands that were playing there. I wanted to find out which bands interested me the most so that I could mark them down as 
unmissable. A few of the bands were reforming for the first time since the 90s so they didn’t actually have any web presence but plenty of others did. One such band that I was completely ignorant of was Goldblade. But after only listening to one track on MySpace and a glance at what the band looked like was enough for me to mark them down as THE band to watch out for. But even that wasn’t enough to completely prepare me for what happened later. But I’ll get to that in due course. And one other thing about my preparations – why I didn’t look on YouTube or the band’s official website for moving footage is a mystery to me. A complete oversight. That’s me all over – focussed, prepared and thorough – but I still manage to somehow miss the obvious.
The night before the gig I was thinking about what equipment to take. It always happens – you want to travel light and you leave a lens out but inevitably you absolutely need the lens that you’ve left at home. So I had to take a camera bag with me which I wished I could’ve avoided. I didn’t like the thought of pushing through the crowd like a ninja turtle saying sorry at every 
step because of the hump on my back. I took my Lowepro SlingShot 200 AW. It isn’t the best bag to use as it doesn’t accommodate a camera with a long lens attached. You can fit the long lens in at the side but you must attach something smaller to your camera – or leave the lens off entirely – that’s an option. The only camera that I own is the Canon 30D so that went in the bag first. I also packed three lenses. A zoom lens (Canon EF 70-200mm 2.8L IS USM), an ultra-wide angle lens (Canon EF-S 10-22mm USM) and lastly what some people call a walk-around lens (Canon EF-S 17-55mm 2.8 IS USM) – one that copes with everything in between. I also packed my flash – a Canon Speedlit 580EX. I didn’t really intend to use the flash but I brought it along just in case. Oh and don’t forget memory cards. I brought along two 8Gb Lexar CF cards and one 4Gb. As it turned out I didn’t need the last card and I photographed nineteen bands using a shade under 2,000 shots in the RAW file format. I also took back up batteries for the flash and for the camera which I didn’t need to use. I think Canon batteries are incredible. I know that the charge isn’t full anymore but it still reads full on my camera – it’s like having a magic car that never runs out of petrol…until it inevitably does of course.
The morning before the gig I was thinking of what to wear. Not to make any kind of fashion statement, but I like lots of pockets to carry stuff like water and other knick-knacks. Anyway a jacket was out of the question because it was too warm. I might have needed a jacket for the night if the temperature dropped but I didn’t want to carry around another bag. So I left the jacket and I tied a small plastic bag around my belt to hold food, water and urine. But I’m joking about the water of course.
I arrived at the gig at about 10:45am – fifteen minutes before the gig was scheduled to kick off and started to look around. I didn’t know what to expect beforehand but the whole operation 
looked totally professional. There was security, barricades, police, medical staff – the whole shebang. It wasn’t long before I spotted a friend and started to talk to her. She asked me if I had a wristband. The wristbands were only necessary for the evening performance so I wasn’t wearing mine at the time – being ridiculously overcautious I didn’t want to wear it out or lose it. It transpired that my wristband was coloured differently from the regular ones that the public had. Mine could get me backstage and in the photographer’s pit – I had no idea – now I didn’t have to worry about weaving my way through the crowd. Things were looking up. Nevertheless, when the first band took to the stage I stayed outside of the photographer’s pit for two reasons. Firstly the crowd hadn’t thickened to the consistency of molasses at this point so I could move about freely. Secondly my zoom lens permitted me a good enough view from this distance and I could get a better angle where I wouldn’t be forced to look up the performers’ noses all of the time. The camera that I’m using doesn’t have a full-frame sensor. It’s a disadvantage in terms of quality but it’s an advantage to me today as it has the effect of making my lenses longer by a factor of 1.6. That means that my 200mm lens becomes a 320mm lens. But it also means that my wide-angle isn’t as wide as it should be either it makes my 10mm actually 16mm. It sounds like impossible magic but it’s not. It’s science.
I’m usually a prolific shooter but this has a downside – and that’s back in front of the computer sorting through what you’ve just shot. Take loads of photos and you’re condemning yourself to hours of post-production. But, on the other hand, it’s digital and it’s free. Still, I decided to pace myself and save card space for the really animated bands who would surely come later. As predicted the weather was warm. It was a cloudy day with outbreaks of sunshine. This didn’t directly affect exposure but it did directly affect my nose and arms which were pretty red by the end of the day. Mental note to self: add sunscreen to that essential list that includes food and water.
The stage that the bands were to play on had a roof which meant that the bands were in open shade and not directly lit by the sun which was great for consistent exposures. I’d recently learnt from other more experienced photographers that an ISO of about 400 is a good place to set your camera. Previously I’d got stubbornly hooked on using ISO 100 – the best quality ISO that my camera has – but it’s restrictive when there isn’t much light about and you’re often forced to use a wide-open aperture which means more critical focussing is needed. All the same I found that initially I could still get a f-stop of 4.5 at ISO 200 and a shutter speed of a 200th of a second. This equalled the focal length of the lens that I was using which is a general rule of thumb. This is to avoid any motion blur that you get when hand-holding a camera. What I failed to appreciate at the time is that I should have really taken the crop factor (mentioned above) into consideration. This would have meant a minimum shutter speed of a 300th of a second.
Seven bands in and it starts happening. The band are Varispeed and the singer is a good frontman with lots of interesting facial expressions and is a joy to watch and a joy to photograph and my ratio of shots per band suddenly skyrockets. There’s another nice surprise for me. The singer is actually Dave Corten, the guitarist in Flyscreen, and I know him. Varispeed is a band that he’s reformed for the day. I’ve never seen him as a frontman and I’m totally impressed. I wasn’t even aware that he sang in another band – I thought that he was exclusively a guitarist.
Band number nine are The Drains and there are two more surprises here. One is that the singer of The Drains is none other than Andy Barding who was known back in the day as our local music journalist and who today has co-organised this event. I had no idea that Andy played guitar and sang. Second surprise was that Carl Bevan, formerly of The 60ft Dolls, was playing drums. Sadly The 60ft Dolls weren’t playing at this event but it was great seeing one third of that mighty unit up on stage. He’s one of the best rock and roll drummers there is and I don’t just mean around these parts – I mean anywhere.
And finally we reach the sharp end that is Goldblade – THE band to watch out for. Their set has barely started before singer John Robb decides that the stage is too big and too far away from the audience so he jumps down off it and right into my lap. This is where my decision not 
to go into the photography pit has paid off. Well not quite. You see I have only one camera and on that camera is a lens that demands that your subject be at least 1.4 metres away from you. John Robb is right in front of me. He’s looming over me. This is where my ultra-wide lens would come in handy. But it’s buried in my bag. For a moment I don’t do anything. I don’t freeze, I just get that feeling you get when you’re in the supermarket trying to decide which checkout queue to join – whichever path you choose is usually the wrong one. And so it is here. If I reach into my bag and put the wide-angle lens onto my camera then John Robb will climb back up onstage and I’ll have to change back to my zoom, then he’ll jump down again ad infinitum. He’s got it in for me – whatever I do he’ll do the opposite. I interrupt my thoughts at this point when I realise that John’s not going anywhere, it looks like he’s here to stay. And this is where my bag – the Lowepro SlingShot – comes in handy. It’s not called SlingShot for nothing – you can keep the bag on your body and just slide it around to the front and access the pocket that stores your lenses. It’s like a little table in front of you. You could keep your lunch in it if you so wished and you could use the bag as a giant bib to catch the crumbs.
OK. Enough. Back to the mêlée. I’ve got my wide-angle lens on but I have another problem. Exposure. The sun is right behind John, he’s moving around and it’s much easier to get a good exposure when someone stays still long enough to give them a ruddy good metering. So I do what I don’t usually do and I switch my camera from manual mode to aperture priority and start firing away. By now John has captured the crowd’s imagination and I’m sandwiched in place by the crowd. I can’t really move anywhere to get better angles or compositions. For that matter I’m not getting very good focus on him either and he’s pretty fast moving. I just take shots and hope for the best. I can see the other photographers trying to react to the situation and I know that I’m in the best position of them all but in my heart I know that I’m not getting the best out of this wonderful and unique moment. Ah well – it’s all a learning experience isn’t it? John finishes the set by baptising the audience in rock and, seeing me still taking photos kindly pumps himself up into a Superman pose for me to snap. That was exhilarating. I’m worn out. I’m content. I could go home happy now. Except for the fact that we’re only halfway through this mini-marathon.
Like Goldblade Bad Samaritans also have a singer that likes to get down with the crowd and down on the floor. My research was lacking here. I had an abbreviated running order sent to me and I searched for ‘Bad Sams’ instead and didn’t find anything. Again that’s me missing the obvious I suppose. Singer Beddis is fast too. Too fast for me. He’s off the stage in no time and I’m stage side in the wrong place at the wrong time so I duck under the monitors and take position there to catch Beddis at the front of the stage pacing back and forth before straddling the security barrier and growling at the crowd. Here again my focus is off. The zoom lens that I’m using does have auto-focus but I’m having several problems. One of which is getting caught up in the moment and not paying proper attention to where my focus point is within the viewfinder. It could be that I’ve got my lens on the wrong setting. There are two settings, one for distances of about 1.4 metres and one for 2.5 metres to infinity. It could also be that I’ve knocked the auto-focus off accidentally. I don’t know anymore. All I’m consumed with, again, is that I’m missing everything – that I’m always one step behind when I should be one step in front.
When Beddis gets back up onstage I position myself stage left just as he hits the floor. Fortuitously I believe that I’m in the right place at this exact moment and I manage to get what I think are good shots. It’s just as well cause I haven’t got diddly squat up until this moment.
I return to the side of the stage. It’s not a brilliant position per se but I like watching what the performers do. There is such a depth to the stage that the musicians can pace that space and, sometimes, they turn and directly face me. It’s here that I get another of what will become my favourite pictures of Beddis when he’s pumped up and staring intensely into space.
The afternoon is over. The square is cleared of all people and the blockades go up in the side-streets. No one gets in without a wristband now. The people have gone but the litter has remained. I wander around kicking my heels until I realise that everyone, no matter if they’re musician, organiser or reporter, are picking up litter. I sign up one photographer to that illustrious list. I unroll an arms length of bin bag and pull to break it off. Nothing. I try again. Nothing. So then starts the search for the perforated line. I finally find it after rolling the bag out some more. Christ these are big bags – longer than an arm’s length. Bloody hell. This will take some filling. It’s not long before the bag is taken off me though. Perhaps they’d thought I’d done enough or saw me struggling with my camera bag or perhaps the square was clean enough – I don’t know.
We’re getting into the evening now and my ISO has gone up from 200 to 500 and I’m mostly shooting at a 400th of a second at f2.8. Band number fifteen: The Sick Livers – another fast moving frontman who wants to press flesh with the audience and another one who I can’t keep up with. I’m side of stage observing, seeing how he moves, what gestures he makes, suddenly he comes over towards me and climbs up on the stage siding. A nice photo opportunity. And one that I miss. Courtesy of my zoom lens – the bugger was too close. The bugger also starts throwing around water from a bottle which is landing all around me. I shield my camera. I have to be careful. The 30D isn’t as ruggedly built as the more expensive Canon workhorses – it’s not strictly water resistant. And again, you’d think I’d have learned my lesson by now but I’m still having problems focussing. In addition to the reasons previously mentioned he’s wrestling with a microphone stand and it’s sometimes hard to coax the focus off the mic stand and onto his face. I’m also zooming in too far on his head and shoulders. Whenever he reaches for the sky I’m not ready for it and I can’t get his whole arm in. Actually that’s the zoom lens’ limitation too. I should have the 17-55mm on the camera. I feel like I should go home, take stock and work out everything that I’ve done wrong today.
But I can’t go home can I? Not only am I here for the duration it’s also Flyscreen time. To say that I’m familiar with Flyscreen may be an understatement. I’ve known the singer since we were at school together. We’ve been in bands together. We’ve been in bands apart. We’ve been on the same bill together – at TJ’s coincidentally enough. I’ve photographed them and I’ve been on tour with them as a guitar technician. So this is the moment that I’ve been waiting for. Throughout the day I’ve seen other photographers get up on stage but I haven’t been yet. One reason is that I believe the stage to be sacred ground – it’s the musician’s domain and you’d better not trespass when they’re playing. But I feel okay to do it with Flyscreen. As I said I know them. Plus I think that it will be a really good memento for them if I cover as many angles as I can during their brief 22 minute set. I take some time before they begin and I work out in my head which lenses I’m going to use and when. Also where I’ll be as well. I decide to start before the band has even started. I use the ultra-wide lens to get some pictures as they’re setting up and, when their set starts, I take some pictures which includes them and the audience. Even so I don’t encroach into the stage area as accidents do happen and you don’t want to be responsible for stepping on someone’s lead and disconnecting them from their amplifier do you?
From the wide-angle I switch to the Canon 17-55mm and cover stage right then I go stage front and switch to the Canon 70-200mm to get some close-ups. Finally I’m back on the ultra-wide lens and push it as far as I can out onto the front of the stage and shoot blind. It was in my mind to shoot the band as they left the stage but I can’t quite remember what happened. I think time-stopped and left me behind.
It was at this point that I had it in my mind to go backstage and do some flash photography. Get some pictures of Flyscreen together. It was especially poignant because Tony, the drummer, had used his vacation to fly from San Francisco, where he now lives, to the UK in order to play the gig. I used my time unwisely by anticipating that Novocaine would start their set early and by the time I got backstage Paul from Flyscreen had left for London. I should’ve talked to him earlier. Shoulda, coulda, woulda. Ah nuts!
Talking of Novocaine I was looking forward to seeing them again after many, many years even though for me the act of taking photographs makes you somewhat deaf. It’s the concentration that goes into the job at hand that somehow separates you from the gig and you end up not really being there. All the same I remember them playing ‘Daddy’s Money’ and not playing my favourite ‘Bury The Hate’.
Because today’s event was relaxed, good-natured and packed with bands performing short sets there wasn’t any three-song curfew imposed. That proved beneficial when the lead singer of Novocaine laid his guitar to rest for the their final song, detached the microphone from the stand and used the stage a bit more. I’m not sure if all the photographers stayed for the whole set – but it sure helps when you love the bands you’re photographing and stick around to watch it all.
Next up were The Darling Buds and they were another band to just watch and see what they did. As I mentioned before I was concerned about being in the photographer’s pit and looking directly up people’s noses. While no one sings quite like Lemmy does quite a lot of singers do tend to sing up towards the mic exacerbating this problem. I sat down on the barrier’s security step to watch the band. I imagined that the security and other photographers might have wondered what the hell I was doing. It’s not a place to watch a band really. You should work or get out. But after a while I decided that Andrea Lewis looked best like we all do – when we’re smiling – so I waited for the gaps between the songs and started taking photographs when the enjoyment was evident and plain to see on her face.
And so onto the final act – Goldie Lookin Chain. You couldn’t help but smile as they jumped and danced around the stage. They were colourful, they were chaotic and they were numerous. A bit of a nightmare from a photographer’s point of view. There were so many of them on stage and they never stopped moving. Lighting and exposure were all over the place. There was little I could do about it. You’d have someone directly in the spotlight, someone just out of it and someone at the front of the stage hovering into the dusk. So you’d have exposed, under-exposed and over-exposed all in the same shot. As much fun as it was watching the band I was thinking this is a disaster I can’t get any usable photographs out of this scenario. My ISO was up to 800 now and I was shooting at f2.8 with a shutter speed of a 100th of a second although looking back on it now in the cold light of day I have no idea why I was on those settings – where was my head at? I guess I should have been at maximum ISO, which on my camera is 3200. That would have enabled me to shoot at a 400th of a second without using flash. That would have given me more of a chance to freeze some action. Given the circumstances I thought that I’d experiment with flash so I put it onto my camera leaving the setting on ETTL (automatic) and using a slow shutter speed to capture some ambient light. The low shutter speed wouldn’t really matter since the flash would freeze the action. I got a few good results but the overall results were mixed. It wasn’t the solution I’d been hoping for. In retrospect I should perhaps have tried a slightly faster shutter speed. I’d been using 1/30th of a second and I was still getting a bit too much motion blur in the shots. I took the flash off the camera and put it away. Then I stuck it out for a while longer but the fight had gone out of me and big drops of water had started to fall from the sky. Like I said, my 30D isn’t very water-tight so I left the photographer’s pit and walked away. From a distance I could see that the stage was now packed. At first I thought that it was members of the crowd who had got up on stage but then guessed that it must have been a kind of curtain call for all the performers that had played that day. And I’d missed it. I wasn’t too sore about this as I felt that I was getting crap anyway and what was the difference between taking bad photographs of Goldie Lookin Chain and taking bad photographs of the whole ensemble cast? In all I’d been out for eleven hours and photographed nineteen bands and I had the body odour to prove it.
The next day when reviewing the photographs I was still a bit down-hearted about all of my failures. I was also starting to focus (pardon the pun) on all the shots where I hadn’t hit focus bang on – what had I been doing? What had I been thinking? Still, at the end of the day you may take 30 photos or you may take 300 photos you’ll still probably want to whittle that selection down to the same low figure whether that figure be 2, 3 or 5 shots per band and that I achieved. Even Goldie Lookin Chain turned out be not so bad. I was dreading looking at those pictures. I even left them until last – I didn’t want to upset myself. But, lo and behold as soon as I saw one half-decent shot I thought: “that’ll do pig, that’ll do”.
And now, as a footnote, if you want to learn more from someone who does know what they’re doing then I recommend visiting Todd Owyoung at ishootshows. He’s a great photographer and shares some good and useful knowledge too – knowledge that I’ll be trying to put to good use the next time that I’m out and about.
Another good egg is Zack Arias. He enjoys shooting bands over in Atlanta. He’s got a great blog which should be bookmarked.
If you want to learn about using a flash there’s really only one place to go – it’s the de facto place on the internet it’s run by David Hobby and it’s called Strobist and I’m so glad it exists. There is always something to learn there.
Then if you’re into the technical side of things when shopping for gear and comparing products then imaging resource has a great wealth of camera reviews.