The Geese at The Mill Sessions

The Geese are a local "indie-folk" band, who I’ve photographed on previous occasions. In fact one of my photos graces their first CD, back when they were just a 3-piece band.

They were performing at The Mill Sessions on Friday past, so we needed a photo of them for the collection.

My comfort zone is photographing people one at a time. Once numbers start becoming plural, the difficulties multiply exponentially. The more people there are, the more chance one of them will be blinking, looking the wrong way, obscuring someone else or pulling a dodgy face.

Time was limited as there’d been a mix up in communication, and I had far less than I’d have liked, as they had to go and sound check with Marcus, who was recording the session.

The upshot of all this was when I got back home to look at the results, I discovered I didn’t have a single shot where they were all looking at the camera and no one was laughing, moving, or obscuring someone else.

Fortunately over the years I’ve become reasonably adept at using Photoshop so was able to take different heads from different shots and merge them together. This final image, then, is actually an amalgamation of about 4 photos. However, I know from talking to other professional photographers, this kind of thing goes on all the time. At least I wasn’t removing wrinkles or making anyone look slimmer.



Filming proved to be a bit problematic too. I was sitting only 4 or 5 feet in front of them - which is great for an intimate live performance, but not so good trying to fit all the band members into the screen. So I had to have the wide-angle lens on the camera, set at the most extreme I could. Unfortunately, the result of this is everyone’s somewhat distorted.

However, if you can forgive the visuals, this song is one of my favourites, and does give quite a good sense of the style of The Geese. It’s called “Trade Not Aid” and is about a man who is drowning but when he calls for help, the person on the shore who can throw him the lifebelt tells him helping him for free could set up a culture of dependency, so he should trade something for the help instead.



For more info about The Geese, visit their Facebook page here:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Geese/168328679870494

Finding Albert at The Mill Sessions

Finding Albert are a rather talented, up and coming band who played at The Mill Sessions last week.

As in previous performances this year, I set about photographing the band before the gig started.

Up until now, I’d been photographing people singly, or in pairs, so with Finding Albert being a 4-piece band, it took a bit of shuffling about to fit them all into the shot. There’s also the problem that the more people in a photo, the more chance one of them will be blinking, looking in the wrong direction or getting lost in a shadow cast by one of the others. It took a bit of time, but I got there in the end.


Finding Albert: left to right -
Chris (drums), Rob (vocals and keyboard), Neil (bass), Michael (guitar)

An additional difficulty, however, lay in the fact the summer has now long since passed and it was dark, so there wasn’t the option of photographing outside. And the empty space I’d used in the first 3 Mill Sessions earlier in the year wasn’t empty.

My solution was to bring along a light, a reflector and an extension lead and use the stairwell.



The gig itself was superb. With room only available for 50 to 60 people max, the venue allows a real sense of intimacy. It feels like barely a step up from having a band perform in your living room. Stripped back from their usual big amps, the drummer even used a cajón, as a full drum kit would have over-powered everything else in this smaller space.

As well as the obvious advantage for the audience, for the performers it also feels like playing to a group of friends, creating a mood that is both intimate and relaxed.

Sitting at the front with my camera on my knee, I put on the wide-angle lens so as to fit everyone in at such a close distance. There’s no fancy camera work, but the videos below should give you a flavour of the evening.


Back to Rome


My Friend Jack

For more about Finding Albert, visit their website here:
http://www.findingalbert.com/

or their Facebook page here:
http://www.facebook.com/findingalbert