Ash are currently on tour in South Africa supporting the Parlotones, they’ve been playing a few gigs for television and radio while they’re down here. On Saturday they played the Live@5 at the Openroom Studios. It was really rad to see a band that I grew up listening to in the nineties. They played a short set but played my favourite song, Girl From Mars and a few other classics like Shining Light and Burn, Baby Burn.
They’re playing at Montecasino tomorrow which should be a rad show, hoping the lighting will be good. Will post photos of the show before the end of the month.
The super talented guys from Zebra & Giraffe are busy recording their second album and I was lucky enough to join them during a few of their recording sessions at Darryl Torr’s Openroom Studios. Their first album, Collected Memories, is one of my favourite records so I am super excited to get my hands on this album once it is released in a few months. Based on the few tracks I’ve heard while shooting the guys in studio I can already tell that I am going to enjoy this record. Without going on about it too much the most interesting part of shooting this was seeing how dedicated and passionate the guys are about what they’re doing. I hope to be joining them for at least one more recording session so keep a lookout for the next Zebra and Giraffe post.
If you want to follow their progress check out their Myspace, Blog and Facebook pages.
A few weeks back I went to check out Taxi Violence at the 5fm studios in Auckland Park. These are the photographs.
So Lark’s Ramfest performance was my first Lark gig. All that I am going to say is that is was phenomenal. Inge Beckmanm’s performance this weekend was the best performance that I’ve seen in ages… WOW!
This weekend Ramfest finally came to Johannesburg, the lineup was a bit disappointing but I was really keen to watch four bands(Die Heuwels Fantasties, The Narrow, Boo! and Lark) on the lineup because I had either never seen them or it had been a while since I last saw them… Die Heuwels Fantasties falls into the former category.
So I get to the venue at about four in the afternoon and the Jo’burg sun is directly in front of the stage beating down on aKING and I am already dreading shooting anything while the sun is up. I hate shooting bands in daylight and with direct sun on a band it just makes things all that more difficult to get interesting shots…
In the end I decided to shoot Die Heuwels Fantasties as if the sun was a huge spot light and hope that some post production would take care of the rest…
Also, they’re a band worth watching…
Photos of The Narrow, Boo! and Lark coming within the week…
Last week Thurday I went to see one of my favourite bands Dear Reader play at the Rustic Theatre… The Rustic Theatre is not my favourite venue in terms of shooting photos as the lighting is always pretty atrocious. These are few of my favourites from the night.
In the last two years of shooting I have somehow managed not to see a single Flash Republic show(not sure how that happened). I finally got to see them at the MNET New Year’s recording… and they’re one of the best live shows l’ve seen. I was there to shoot Zebra and Giraffe(post below) and was not really interested in shooting any of the other bands… anyway… I shot some of the Flash Republic performance and now I can’t wait to shoot/see them again… They’re clearly a band that have thought about their live show and worked on it…
Here are a few from the evening…
A few weeks back Zebra & Giraffe performed at the MNET studios in Randburg… along with a few other bands. The show was a pre-record for MNET’s new years eve show… I was basically there to shoot Z&G but shot a few of Flash Republic as well… as it turned out the lighting conditions for Flash Republic were a lot better than they were for the Z&G performance… and on top of that my lens was having trouble focusing, so it looks like I’ll need to get it calibrated(or more likely I will have to get a new one)…
These shots are all from one area of the studio as for obvious reasons my mobility was limited…
So now that I’ve made my excuses here are the four shots of Z&G that I was happy with… I will post the Flash Republic ones a bit later…
Those of you who read this blog on a semi-regular basis will know that I really love this band… so get yourself to one of there upcoming shows…
Last week Friday I spent the day at WITS with my friends from Dear Reader. They were playing their final show for the year, this after a insane touring schedule which took them all over Europe. I got there at about twelve and basically just tried to shoot the day in a documentary kinda way. When processing I decided to go with a high contrast black and white look…
The show was fantastic, I didn’t get that many shots of the actual performance as the WITS Great Hall doesn’t really have any space where photographers can shoot from without standing in front of the audience and getting in their way…
<start rant>
i hate it when photographers do that, just ‘cos you have a camera doesn’t give you/us the right to get in everyone’s way.
<end rant>
So to end off, this band is insanely fantastical, buy their cd, go watch them when they’re on tour again and then do it again. Do it! Do it!
p.s. I wasn’t sure how many of these to post, so i basically posted all of those which I processed.
www.dearreadermusic.com
Not much to say here except that these guys rock, oh, and it was fun shooting in the rain. One or two aren’t as sharp as I would have liked but I decided to post them anyway… just because they look cool(the band)…
