By the way, this was the first Unthanks song I heard, and it was my gateway into folk. It came on the radio when I was driving late at night, and I had to pull over because it made me too emotional.

The Unthanks are genuinely lovely people. They're from round here, and I've been to see them play many a time. A very entertaining live band, I strongly recommend getting tickets if they're ever touring in your area.

#TheUnthanks #LiveMusic

A couple shots from last night’s show. #livemusic #photography

Some thoughts after my first foray into shooting live bands last night.

First, I was surprised that I got better results from my 70-200 lens than my 24-70, even though I was able to get quite close. I thought that the 24-70 would be more forgiving, but I discovered a few things I did not expect:

The lighting was horrible (I expected that), and I relied upon spot metering. I think this is why the longer lens yielded better results. The longer lens (and necessarily wide open f stop), naturally lend themselves to photographs that isolate a subject (i.e., close ups). So, I took lots of close ups, and, consequently, spot metering worked great, and the long lens allowed me to fill the frame.

What did not work great was any attempt to take "establishing shots." Since the lighting was so uneven (and dim overall) there was almost no way to average the lighting, use a higher f stop for more depth of field, and employ my wider angle lens to capture the whole band. Thus, all my 24-70 shots were mediocre.

Last night was singer songwriters who didn't move around a whole lot. Tonight I'm shooting heavy metal bands, so the story may be entirely different, and I may post my follow up about how it is difficult to follow with such a long lens! 🙃

#photography #LiveMusic

Okay, seeing as this is a new account under an old name, here's an #introduction.
I'm madCam, known to my friends as "mad" and my enemies as - well, whatever they want, I'm not listening to them!
Worked as a #band #photographer for the best part of 10 years, retired from the music biz for well over a decade now, but looking at putting my entire archive online for all to see.
Please, be gentle! 😜
Some keywords...
#LiveMusic #bands #bandPhotography #manchester #liverpool #chester #london #