Highlight: Glitter everywhere...



Lowlight: ...including over my whole camera kit.

Fill in: I was right at the front in a great position for this flamboyant band whose repertoire included dressing up everyone in neon jewellery and showering them in glitter dispensed from coke cans. I happened to be right in the firing line when the lead singer decided to shower a huge bagfull of glitter over the crowd and am still trying to remove it from my hair, face, clothes, camera bag, lenses, flash guns and cameras.

Tech Spec: Glitter is very pretty but lethal to cameras. This was cosmetic grade glitter so not stratchy, but could cause havoc if it gets into the finer crevices of the DSLR or motorised lenses. I am using vast amounts of canned air to decontaminate everything but am still nervous.

For editorial: www.redferns.com

Highlight: No fighting to get to the front.



Lowlight: Trying to get variation on bloke with guitar pic.

Fill in: Beautiful music, but blokes with acoustic guitars can be a bit dry to photograph and I had three in a row. Luckily they all looked great, actually looked up at the audience quite a lot and even smiled.

Tech Spec: The light was standard so I was glad not ot have to use flash in this laid back atmosphere. It was just a case of waiting for the singers to look up and out which they obligingly did quite a lot.

For editorial: www.redferns.com

Highlight: A daytime gig! Get a Saturday night off.



Lowlight: Standing between Conor Maynard and over 200 hormonal teenage girls...

Fill in: Touted as the next Justin Beiber, this guy is more like the bad girl's Justin Beiber. I was extremely brave and queue jumped over 200 young, fit, obsessed hormonal girls to ensure a front position by the stage as there was no pit. Once entrenched in position with a fellow photographer I immediately regretted this move as the girls all came flooding in after and crushed us both against the stage. We had to endure this position for two hours.

Tech Spec: Earplugs! Being next to a monitor turned up to 11 is nothing compared to a room full of screaming, teenage girls.

For editorial: www.redferns.com

Tech Spec: This was the second gig in the HMV Next Big Thing series I was shooting, and most of the venues are pretty low key, so I was hoping to use flash at most of them. However as there was a photopit, flash was prohibited, so it was a case of waiting til the light was right on the night as it were. Smaller venues have the lights much closer to the stage so the contrast tends to be very high, and back lights shine straight into the camera. Positioning yourself so the lights are obstructed or form part of the composition is key.


For editorial: www.redferns.com

Highlight: Seeing Maxine again.

Lowlight: Cleaning out the bath of rotting cherries.

Fill in: So, we had had a great idea to do the seven sins as a series of photos and started last year almost to the day with sloth. We must have got into the part too much as it took a year for us to finally get round to rebooting this project and we actually managed to shoot the rest of the images in one day. Now it just needs me to get photoshopping...

Tech Spec: Trying to keep the theme, I lit Maxine very softly so I could put more moulding in photoshop after if necessary. More important was getting a usable pose and expression for each sin, which I had mapped out in my head beforehand, and any extras - such as random hands, arms, legs and other body parts. I also had to get Maxine in a bath of cherries which although fairly straight forward to set up, was not very pleasnat to clear up - alsoI had banked on the cherries floating in water which they most categorically do not - so had to shoot them separately anyway.....

Tech Spec: I used flash on minus 1 so it didn't kill the background, and set the camera on 1250 to get the ambient light. Balancing the two was pretty tricky as the stage was very unevenly lit and some of the ambient light overlit the bands at times causing movement blur. I tried to keep the shutter up to 1/60 to avoid this. I also tried to keep the aperture at F5.6 to get as much depth of field as we were quite close to the action.


For editorial: www.redferns.com

Highlight: Getting to the job before Boris! It was a very trying journey...


 
Lowlight: Not being in time to set up the shot. It was set up by another photographer who had different ideas to me about the lighting.


Fill in: Boris was there to switch on a laser sculpture, and I was supposed to be there 30 minutes beforehand to set the shot up. Traffic and events conspired against me and I was lucky to get there before Boris. It was freezing cold but despite being half an hour late myself I was still hanging around for half an hour before we took any shots.
Tech Spec: The money shot was Boris with the laser sculpture in the sky in the background. Balancing the exposure to ensure the lasers were visible was going to be tricky. The shot had already been set up by another photographer who had the idea of using the stage lights on very low to light Boris and turning off all the other lights. This was okay, but meant using a very high ISO on the camera and even then using a slow shutter and wide aperture. I went for the safer but less arty route of turning on the flash and keeping the shutter open to get the lasers. Even then it was a bit feeble!

For more info: http://www.london.gov.uk/media/press_releases_mayoral/boris-switches-laser-sculpture-brentford

Highlight: Shooting form the pit instead of from back by sound desk!

 
Lowlight: It is an apron stage, so the space right at the front is a bit crowded. End up having to shoot from the side.

Fill in: Was supposed to be at Shepherd's Bush Empire but the snow fell, passes didn't materialise and photographers cancelled. The upshot was I ended up at the O2 for Olly.
Tech Spec: The whole of the first song was Olly right at the back of the stage, with us peering over the edge of it and spotlights waving madly in front of us. It was like one of those fairground shooting ranges as Olly moved from side to side and the spot lights waved in front of him. The second song he walked out a bit and the third song he was right on top of us for lots of up the nose shots.

For more info: www.redferns.com

Highlight: first time shooting at The Arts Club, Dover street, Mayfair. Love new venues. Also got to do soundcheck.


 
Lowlight: Salted popcorn on tap. And I'm trying to cut out superfluous savoury snacks. The waiter put a huge bowl right beside me and it was gone in sixty seconds. Just an empty bowl and me sitting amongst a smattering of unpopped kernals and fluffy chips licking my fingers.
Fill in: It was a showcase for Sony who needed pictures for the Daily Star. The brief was to get the performance, which was easy since I got the soundcheck whilst they were filming, so half the shots were iin the bag before it had even started. The rest of the shots were of Adam meet and greets.

Tech Spec: The gig was well lit and Adam looked smoulderingly sexy which his black quiff and black suit. However when he went to the meet and greets it was the proverbial black cat in a coal mine. The lights were low and the darn camera just wouldn't focus and it took two reshoots to get a simple snapshot. Lesson - be forceful and make sure even the simple snaps are in a well lit area to avoid embarrassment. Or shoot it on an iphone with the preflash on...

For more info: http://preorder.adamofficial.com/index2

Highlight: Got my picture in an exhibition - (look out for Tori Amos by yours truly).

Lowlight: So has Jill Furmanovsky and whole load of other talented, prominent female photographers. Am sure my picture will be the worst one there!