Future Of The Left

On Tuesday night I headed to Scala in King’s Cross, London to photograph Be Your Own Pet, Scala was a cinema until 1993 when it was forced to close after illegally screening A Clockwork Orange, however, six years later it was refurbished and reopened as a live music venue. It’s a massive building, though not perfectly suited to it’s purpose, the first time I visited Scala I spent about twenty minutes trying to navigate the venue before I actually got to see a band play, there are so many corridors, staircases, bars, toilets and smoking areas there that the main room where the music goes down only takes up about 10% of the property. Charming in it’s own little way I suppose. I missed Be Your Own Pet’s first support act, but the next band on was Wales’ Future Of The Left, who were bloody good, but bloody hard to shoot, Be Your Own Pet photos coming very soon!

Nightwish

Last night I went to shoot Finland’s Nightwish at their sold out show at Carling Academy Birmingham, anyone who is familiar with Nightwish or their fanbase will know exactly why I felt extremely out of place when I walked into the venue wearing a nice white shirt, straight jeans and my prettiest Adidas trainers, very awkward indeed. The gig was packed out, after the support act finished their set I made my way through the audience – many of whom did not seem to take kindly to my outfit – towards the left hand side of the stage, and spoke to the security guard who told me that I wasn’t allowed to come into the photo pit this way, and that I’d have to go to the right hand side of the stage instead, that’s a new one on me, I always come in from the left. So I headed to the other side of the venue and spoke to the security guard there, bad news awaits, apparently I’m only allowed to shoot for the third and fourth songs, I asked if I could wait around in the area next to the photo pit, “you’ll be alright where you are” – he replied, I was officially a member of the audience, a terrified one at that. After waiting around for what seemed like weeks, the lights went out, and Nightwish took the stage, I’ve never heard an audience that loud at a venue of this size, now I’m really scared, as I contemplated whether or not it would be a good idea to piss myself I looked towards the mixing desk, “I want to be there” – I muttered under my breath, I then noticed Tony Iommi of Black Sabbath fame standing up there, okay now I really wish I was there. Nightwish eventually played through the first two songs, both of which clocked in at around six or seven minutes each, as soon as they were over I threw my bag into a corner and ran into the photo pit, it seems than God was on my team last night, as the lights were fantastic, a little changeable, but many of my photos were taken at f8, a few at f11! Nightwish like to move around a lot when they play, but the bright light made up for it, at times it was even too bright, lots of ice blue and pink colours. These are my first photos in a while, so I hope you like them! Thanks for reading and I’ll be back soon.

The Kissaway Trail

I should’ve posted this a few days ago, but I’ve been busy with my new place. So here they are, The Kissaway Trail live at Bush Hall on Wednesday, no photo pit, bad lighting, overall it was a bit of a nightmare. I’m not sure when my next concert is going to be, probably not until March now, I’ve been slacking a bit recently as far as getting passes is concerned.

The Kissaway Trail on MySpace

Red Light Company

Headed out to Bush Hall in West London last night to shoot The Kissaway Trail, I’ve never been to Bush Hall before, the first thing I noticed when I walked in was the photo pit, or lack of one, the fact that there was nothing between the audience and the stage meant that I would have to get to the front early if I was to stand any chance of shooting The Kissaway Trail. I was in for a long wait, here’s a couple of photos of one of the supports, London’s own Red Light Company.

Red Light Company on MySpace

Gallows

8:40pm and it’s about time Gallows showed up if they stand any chance of getting everyone out of the venue in time for the club night which starts at 10:00pm. Finally four Gallows members take the stage one by one, closely followed by a heavily tattooed and frankly shorter than I’d imagined Frank Carter, and waste no time getting things started. Luckily the first three songs were quite long, they seemed long at least, though nothing could ever beat Explosions In The Sky playing three, ten minute long songs in a row, probably the easiest shoot ever. Gallows were pretty hard to shoot to be honest, the lighting was okay in places, but I found it hard to really capture the action which was happening in front of me. The show was incredible, Gallows are a band that just do what they do when they do it, they’re becoming fairly mainstream now, and there’s nothing wrong with that because they’re still one of the truest bands around right now, I can’t see them ever changing the sound of their music unless they really want to, even if they are signed to a major label, the downside being all the red tape when it comes to getting a pass for one of their shows, luckily their press officer is the type of guy who gets stuff done, and responds to your emails, hats off to him. Anyhow, if you haven’t heard Gallows, have a listen, and go to a show, they’re on tour in the UK until the beginning of March.

Gallows on MySpace

Set Your Goals

The second act to play at the Gallows show was a Canadian hardcore punk band called Fucked Up, delightful, however, I decided to give them a miss as my battery was already beginning to feel the strain of shooting SSS, sorry Fucked Up! Their story is an interesting one, it can be found on Wikipedia, worth a read for sure, the name speaks for itself though, they are truly fucked up, but their performance did bring a wry smile to my face, in fact, Fucked Up are so punk, they don’t even have a MySpace page, gotta love ‘em for it, it’s nice to see someone doing things a bit differently. So next up was Set Your Goals, a a loud pop punk (?) band from San Francisco who I had never heard before, but the audience seemed to like them, a lot, much like Fucked Up and SSS before them, Set Your Goals spent much of their set running around, jumping into the crowd, and generally being hard to shoot, regardless of this, they put on a fantastic show and are well worth checking out!

Fucked Up Wikipedia article
Set Your Goals on MySpace

SSS

I headed North to Carling Academy Birmingham last night to watch Gallows play the second show of their massive headline tour, with a capacity of around three thousand, Carling Academy is easily the biggest venue on the current tour, and probably the biggest venue Gallows have ever headlined, so it could’ve gone either way. Here are some pictures of the first band to take the stage, SSS, or Short Sharp Shock.

SSS on MySpace

Secrets Of Killer Concert Photos Revealed by Jamie Howard

Last year I read an interesting article on PopPhoto.com by Irish concert photographer Jamie Howard, I recently stumbled across the article again when browsing some links which I found on somebody’s Flickr profile. Jamie has written a four page long guide to concert photography, covering everything from the basics of getting a well exposed shot, through to selling your finished photos. Recently I’ve been getting more and more people asking how to take a decent gig shot, so I thought posting this may satisfy some readers, at least for the time being, so click here to read it, be sure to bookmark the page so that you can refer back to it whenever you need some sound advice. If you’ve been here before you will have noticed that things are looking a bit different (no gallery, etc.), that’s because I’ve been working hard on my new website and it should be up and running very soon, so this will just act as my blog, maybe I’ll even get my own guide up here one day. As I said last week, things are pretty quiet on the concert side of things this month, but I do have something very special coming very soon, so keep checking back!

I couldn’t find a link to Jamie Howard’s work anywhere, so if you are Jamie, and you’re reading this, hit me up at info@jacobsaunders.co.uk and I’ll post a link to your site or something!