Today’s website plug goes to the lovely Givvi, a fantastic vocalist and singing tutor based in the Midlands.
Her site has recently been revamped by Streamline Web, and features some photos that I took at Wildhearts frontman Ginger’s birthday show in December. Givvi features in a fab recording of Jackdaw 4’s “This Is Your Life” with Willie Dowling – check out this and much more on her website.

After sleeping on it last night, I changed my mind and decided to pull this bit out of the last post and give it a new subject heading. After seeing Muscle Car at the Hobgoblin last month, I knew that taking the flashgun with me to the Brighton Bash would probably be useful (quick reminder – it’s bloomin’ dark in there!). During the course of the day I did take a few shots at super-high ISO, but decided that this gig would be a good opportunity to play around balancing flash with ambient (something I’ve not done a great deal in a live gig situation, three times this year and possibly five or six total – I shoot 99% of gigs using ambient light, partly because a lot of gigs don’t allow flash, and partly because I don’t feel at all confident using it yet).

If you look at any photography forum that mentions gig photography, there’ll usually be posts where someone moans about flash killing the atmosphere, answered by a flurry of posts saying “only if you don’t know how to use it”. Learning how to use it is the key…it’s the difference between coming out with harsh, flat photos (which I’ve always found a real turn-off), or preserving all that lovely colour and depth. Now I’m no expert at all – I’m just trying something outside my usual comfort zone, and will be sharing my thoughts as I go along.

Following on from the subject below, here’s something that arose from a chat with my Dad last weekend. He was showing me a website he’d been looking at a few days previously. Viewing the site owners’ biographies, we saw what looked like a couple of fine examples of the art of being creative with the truth. They had what was essentially a start-up company, but were attempting to appear a lot more well-established – just a little bit of research was able to uncover a bluff.

Now if I were to apply the same technique, I might come up with something like:

“I am an award-winning artist, and alongside the continuation of my artistic development have been active in the music industry for almost 20 years, also with experience in music promotion dating back to 1990″

Stop laughing at the back there. Now, although every part of that (clumsily worded) statement is technically true (e.g. I won an art prize when I was seven and ‘artistic development’ can mean just about anything you want it to), the person being promoted there is not someone that anyone who really knows me would recognise or agree with. It’s just a few isolated, unconnected nuggets of past experience, mixed together in an ambiguous and slightly pretentious way. But it just goes to illustrate that you can talk up anything if you have the front to do it. There are always people who will be impressed by a flouncy biography!

When I visit a website, I always check out the content in biographies and ‘about me’ pages. I like getting a little peek at the person behind the web presence, and reading what people choose to write about their background and experience (and if they have a blog as well as a biography, whether the story is any different!).

I’ve thought a fair bit about what it is that I actually want to do with this website. I’ve always intended it to be pretty straightforward – lots of examples of photos I’ve taken, a few short and to the point bits about how I work, a short ‘About me’ section that hopefully hovers on the right side of fluffy, and a blog for all the newsy, ranty, and/or stream of consciousness stuff. Good balance? Terrible idea? Ultimately I’m not the judge of that, but I’m fairly comfortable that the site is a pretty accurate representation of me, for better or worse.

I always wonder to what extent the author of a website is trying to put a spin on their experience and success to make themselves look more impressive or trustworthy to their audience. I say ‘to what extent’, because everybody who has a deliberate web presence does it a bit, whether consciously or not – even when you’re writing for yourself, the fact that you put it online means that you know there’s a chance/hope/risk of someone (insert dramatic chord) actually reading it.

More on this later…

There are always topics in the go on various fora and blogs about gear upgrades – is camera x better than camera y, is brand x better than brand y, blah, blah, blah, what’s bigger/better/faster/must-have today. All fabulous fodder if you want to spend your time getting into arguments or games of one-upmanship, but pretty much guaranteed to put me in ’scroll and ignore’ mode. However, scrolling past topics like this does occasionally get me thinking about why I’ve made the choices I have made, so here are my thoughts on the subject without reference to specific brands or lenses )

As you’ll have twigged, most of my photography is rock/band/concert photography. So, festivals aside, I am most often to be found in dark, poorly lit venues, and my preference is to be able to take pictures that I am happy with in these conditions. Therefore as time has gone on, I’ve tried to choose equipment which allows me to do things the way I want to (with varying degrees of success). The camera I have now is a pleasure to use – for example, recently I successfully shot a gig in an upstairs room of a pub, where literally the only light hitting the band was from the fire exit sign above the entrance to the loos. Technology has not made me a better photographer, just a slightly less stressed one with more latitude to try to do things the way I want to, and less frustration in difficult circumstances.

Pre-current technology, my options for that pub gig would have been:

a) use flash (generally allowed in small venues, but not my forte, I need to spend time learning to use it properly).

b) decide it was impossible and sulk

c) give it my best shot, push ISO and aperture to the max, slow the shutter speed and have a very steady hand

d) same as c. but not worry about the steady hand and declare that blurriness is an artistic decision (OK I’m being a bit flippant now- I’ve seen some really fab arty gig photos with loads of movement that really hit the spot, BUT if you happen to be working for someone who is expecting sharp pics it’s not an option!)

As far as I’m concerned, advances in technology have had one major advantage – allowing me to concentrate more on the pictures I want to try to make. It’s still my level of knowledge, and the choices I make, that determine the outcome of a photo. Getting a technically perfect live image isn’t more important than getting a picture that feels right (which in itself is pretty subjective). While technology can be fab and in certain situations can give you the luxury of choice, clinical accuracy doesn’t always make the most appealing or enduring image, in fact it can be downright boring.

My reaction to a photograph is not governed by knowing what it was taken with, or how sharp it is, or how perfectly exposed it is, but whether or not I like the image and the feelings it evokes.

At the end of the day, what you use to make an image is just a tool. If you use it to to produce images that you and your clients/potential clients are happy with, where your equipment sits on the bells and whistles scale really doesn’t matter.

If I could choose a superpower, I think that would be the one I’d pick. SLRs are not subtle. While it’s useful to catch the attention of the artist and for them to make a connection with the camera, big gear can be about as subtle as wandering around with a pet elephant in tow, and I like to tuck myself away as unobtrusively as possible. I love it when a band are amazed at seeing the photos because they didn’t notice me taking them.
Just one of today’s random thoughts…