Photographer’s Notes:
A combination of great timing and patience, a good position and clever choice of lens led me to pull of this famous pose from Florence pictured above!
On the 9th March, Day 2 of the London leg of her tour I went to Photograph and watch Florence and the Machine performed at the packed Ally Pally. First time I have seen her live and she did not disappoint.
The only issue with photographing at Alexandra palace is the fact that the stage is about 6ft high, so you need to come prepared with a step if you are a little shorter. Standing close to the stage will not do you no favours as they put a lot of effort into the production complete with choir on the stage left and violinists/instrumentals on the stage right. To complete the stage set a huge 80’s style art deco frame dominated the rear of the stage performing a platform for the musicians to play from.
On the photography side, there were probably 12+ photographers all vying for space in the pit. Luckily after The Horrors set, I managed to find a spare seat just in-front of where I thought her mike stand might be which payed off in the end.
From TV clips and looking through previous pictures of her past performance I noticed that she loved flowy type dresses like the one pictured above designed by Alex Noble and always she gave really dramatic poses which is what you want from any performer as they make the best photos.
I had to temporarily leave my position and go grab my wide angle (10-20mm sigma) lens just before the show started. A decision that I’m glad I did as I was able to fit in a lot of her performance giving the limited space in the pit.
One thing about large venues is you tend to get good lighting which helps when photographing bands like The Horrors. A lot of their shows tend to have blue or green washes of back-lit light with very little white light from the front. This time round I left with a few good shots of front man Faris Badwan as pictured above.
If you missed her concert you can always relive the moment by listening to it online here!
You can email me any questions you have!
Enjoy!
Photographer’s Notes:
Pictured above is the band We Are Augustines who I had the pleasure to photograph at the borderline for HMV’s Next Big Thing #HMVNextBigThing which kicked off on the 2nd of February. I first saw them perform on a live stream of Chase Jarvis’ webcast last year and i was surprised how down to earth and relaxed the trio are yet when I watched them live they put on an energetic - rock and roll styley performance and rocked the stage big time.
HMV’s Next Big Thing presented me with a lot of photographic challenges. As most events were held in small intimate venues there was no dedicated photo pit to separate you from the punters so it meant I had to show up really early to secure my spot for most events or try and squeeze my way to the front without upsetting hardcore fans which was FUN! (not). The size of the venues meant that they could not use powerful lighting as these would end up blinding people, so instead you find yourself shooting artist that are very badly lit with the dreaded LED parcans and strips which mess-up the on camera AutoWB.
Luckily not every venue was like this and there was no real ban on using a flashgun so always carried one with me just in-case I needed some fill light. To give you an idea how bad the lighting was I had to push my camera to ISO 4000 for some shots.
Some other acts I enjoyed included (more pictures coming soon)
Bluey Robinson
Gemma Ray
Fatoumata Diawara
