One of my favourite things about Xmas is the Christmas special of my gig night, The Sunday Service.  It’s on the last Sunday of every month, generally showcasing three ace bands from near and far, at Verve Bar in Leeds.  The Christmas Special Brew however, is always my fave of the year, as we ask back a whole bunch of bands that we’ve enjoyed over the year, and get them to play short sets of 3 songs each, including a festive cover track!  It ends up super Christmasy and because it’s also generally fuller than usual, we hosted it at Verve’s sister bar, Call Lane Social.

Upstairs is Leeds’ only Tiki Bar, adding a bizarrely tropical vibe to the festive proceedings.

We’d hosted it here last year too (check out a Facebook gallery here)

First up was the amazing PalookaI helped him sing his homespun Christmas cover called ‘I swear I saw him’ which might honestly be the best Xmas song I’ve ever heard.

If I can find it somewhere to link you guys in, I will!   It’s SOOOO good.Next up was the lovely Jennie Chapman.  She usually has a full band (AKA: the Pets)

But the drummer was sick and we had to make do with just Jennie and a pet.  

Her Xmas covers were a delight, and I can’t wait to hear her new studio recordings.

Joining us again in as many months (see last months SS images here) was the insanely gifted lap-guitar bluesman, Ben Pike.

You’ve got to see this guy go on the lap slide, it’s amazing.Some of Ben’s pals, Adam & Sam of ‘Louis Louis Louis’ joined him for his Xmas cover, Louis Armstrong’s ‘Christmas in New Orleans’Next up was the amazing Dan Wilde - who’s both ace and has played for us many times before.

He drove all the way from Cambridge to play the Xmas special!

All round musical Maestro Dan Norton led us in some audience harmony driven covers in the style of Bing Crosby!

Silver Bells was quite special.

Also  making a long trek was Mr Gavin Mart, who laid out a hypnotically rocked up cover of Come All Ye Faithful!

Lots of impressive foot stomping all round!Wrapping up the night like a Christmas gift to all was last month’s SS stars Louis Louis Louis!

These guys are a ‘jump jive’ outfit!

I reckon they’d make a wedding band that would guarantee dancers immediately on the floor!

We’ve never had dancers at the Sunday Service before, and at this Xmas special, we did!  Happy days.

As always, it was a massive success alround, and at the end thought it’d be rude not to photograph the revellers!

Fun times all round…

Thank you and happy Christmas to everyone who came!

B

Some of you dear readers may know I host and organise a band night in Leeds called the Sunday Service.  It’s a free night at Verve bar in Leeds on the last Sunday of every month and our mantra is to champion the cream of the North’s singer songwriter talent and pay them in beer and pictures.  It’s always a great night where music fans come to respectfully listen to good music, and bands play all the better in that listening environment!

First up were the amazing Garforth & Myers, so named cos Rory Garforth is on the left, and Adam Myers is on the right.

I even got them the right way round!

I don’t mess about you know.

It’d be wrong if I didn’t take a photo of feet during the set.

They’d brought along a cellist and backing singer to make the sound all the sweeter.

Rory’s an photographer in his own right. Check out his ace work on his site here. Guitars are a thing of beautyNext up was the legendary Ben Pike.

Ben’s laid out his gravelly blues loads of times before, and I particularly like the lap-slide stuff he does on his knees

It’s all about the Sunday Service granny lamp, hanging out with the cool instruments.Last up that night were the newly formed, but unbelievably brilliant, Louis Louis Louis.

These kids have also played before in various permutations, but this rig is a ‘jump jive’ flavour, covering the works of three famous Louis; Louis Armstrong, Louis Jordan (I think) and Louis Someone Else.…though anything featuring double bass gets my vote.

Also drummer singers is also great crack.  (see the legend that is Mr Phil Collins for details! ;-] )

Such a cool looking instrument.

But I bet it’s a ball ache to drag about and he wishes he played the piccoloThey did a brilliant cover of ‘King of the Swingers’ from the Jungle Book. I was thinking as they played that these guys would make a brilliant wedding band to get a crowd in the mood.

They weren’t short on energy

Sam can even make the Clarinet cool.
It’s great to be able to supply the bands with a cool set of images of them in action

As I said, can’t go wrong with this guy

They’d even worn smart suits for the occasion.

Louis Louis Louis were such fun that I asked them back to play Decemeber’s Sunday Service Xmas Special Brew, which was last weekend and went down a treat.  Watch this cyber space for images, and a blog’s been lined up and scheduled!

Party on folks!

Check it out:

Pretty crazy what you can do with a phone eh?!

For the geeks out there here’s how I did it:

I took one iPhone 4S (which has a great little HD camera on it, though exposure is more manually controllable with the ProCamera App) clicked it into a Glif, a low profile iPhone fixing with a tripod attachment in the bottom…

…and attached it to the Manfrotto Monosteady, a cunning little support device for lightweight cameras.

As well as being able to be a mini tabletop tripod and a shoulder-braced support, it’s a rudimentary steadycam!  I say rudimentary, because it’s nowhere near as smooth as say the expensive Glidecam or Merlin supports, but for £80 you can’t really expect it to be so!  It does smooths out the walk and looks infinitely better than handheld video.

It’s not vastly perceptible, but the video is in slightly slow-motion, and yet Dave mimes his lines in time.  I’ve seen it done elsewhere, and was interested to try it on the iPhone.  I found out the iPhone shoots video in Apple’s Quicktime Full-HD H264 30 frames per second video.  I wanted to slow that down after filming it to 24 frames per second, so some googling told me that if I shortened down the mime track he had playing in his headphones to 80% it’s actual length (which therefore made it sound 20% faster), then when the 30p video is slowed to 24p, his lips’ll sync!  Hope that didn’t make you cross-eyed!

Anyhoos – after dragging the HD video files off my iPhone (using the free iExplorer), I used MPEG stream clip (also free!) to convert the video to 30p proRes422, then used the Final Cut Studio ‘Cinema Tools‘ (not free, but great for changing frame rates) to batch conform the footage to 24p.  I dropped that into a 24p Final Cut 7 timeline with the original audio track and matched up the clips by eye.  Normally, I’d have used pluraleyes, but the audio of Dave’s Mime wouldn’t have matched well the original audio.

Then I did a bit of creative editing till about 3am this morning splashed a cheeky grade on it with Magic Bullet looks and went to bed while it exported out.

So there you are!  Granted there are even cheaper ways to DIY it than I did, as I’ve already got some of the toys.  But as always, I’m a big advocate of getting out there and doing it.  Don’t let things like ‘I’ve not got the gear’, ‘don’t have time’ or ‘no budget’ get in your way…

…you can do it on your phone!

Party on people.  Get involved and be creative!

B

ps. Be sure to check out more of Dave Pilla‘s tunes, cos he’s absolutely wicked.

pps. He and loads of other amazing muso’s are playing at my Sunday Service Christmas Special next Sunday at Call Lane Social.  Free in, good times, more here!

As usual, I thought I’d share a few of my fave images of the night.  

These ones are of two members of the band ‘Silverlode‘, who came and played a stripped back set for us.  They generally call themselves the ‘Brother’s Grimm’ when they play as a two, and their tunes are always unusual and refreshing.

I do like to catch a few details around the scene.As it was on the 30th Oct, a pal of mine brought a wee Halloween pumpkin to oversee proceedings. 

The 2nd act of the evening was in fact a local comic, named Silky.

As a musician, he asked me if I wanted a fun or a serious set – so I asked for a half funny set.

He played some lovely material, and made us all laugh.

As it’s pretty much a tradition of mine, it only seemed fair to photograph his feet tooOur final act were called ‘The Heathen Kings‘, who have graced our walls before.

I do like bands who come and play a whole host of fun instruments.

Mandolin for the win!Token Heathen Kings shoe shot!

Daniel’s a pal of mine too, and most of these guys work at Leeds College of Music, helping nourish young musicians of Leeds to fruitionLovin their ribbony tamo!

On a drizzly night last I went to the recently refurbed City Varieties Music Hall, in the centre of Leeds, to catch James Vincent McMorrow play.
I remember going to the City Varieties as a kid, with nana, to catch the Xmas pantos.

It was a bit tatty back then, and in recent years closed its doors for a massive refurb.  

It literally re-opened it’s doors last month, to an apparently storming show from Ken Dodd (!), who played till 1.30am!

But it was great to see how they’ve restored it to it’s former glory; and it’s wonderful to have another grand venue for musicians to play in Leeds centre.

James’ support was in the shape of Lindi Ortega, a fab Canadian alternative country singer songwriterShe sang a most excellent track about her little red boots, and a bunch of tracks about lyin’, lovin’ & being treated like a horse (?!)This new country darlin’ sings with that sweet vibrato inflection akin to Dolly Parton, and’ll no doubt be one to watch.
During the break I took a nosey round the gaff, and liked the retro vibe in the bar…Including some sweet old posters from the Varieties days of yore.

The show was organised by my pal Dave Redfearn of The Littlest Mojo (posing proudly with ol’ Ken!).

Together, a few months back, he and I threw a solo gig for James at my night The Sunday Service in Leeds and his sound was fantastic then.

[We shot a little video doco back then, which is climbing the pile of work I've got on, so watch this space to see it soon]This tour, James was playing with his full band, and the sound was simply beautiful – much closer to the feel of his album ‘Early in The Morning‘

He’s really quite shy (in person and on stage), but like many irishmen, has a wicked wit and loves to tell a tale.

Though it’s interesting to see that even since seeing him last, and having now played thousands of shows, he’s starting to look more comfortable on stageI enjoyed the fact that he played most songs with the band…

Mainly friends of James’; but all fab musicians in their own right

[with excellent taste in footwear]…but he also played a few tracks solo, really laying out that unique husky alto for all to soak in.While nosing about during the break, I spoke with the more-than-helpful staff (mainly older volunteers) about snapping from the ‘gods’ (the highest level of the building where the stage lights are) and they showed me the way up.  

It was a cool vantage from up there.

I’d also photographed James (and his beard of variable girth) and The Brudenell Social Club a good while back, touring with the excellent Joan As Policewoman (defo worth a listen too!).  If you’d like to check out the images, click here.

It’s always a pleasure to hear and see James play, especially in the most excellently refurbed City Varieties.

He’s currently touring the UK, so if he’s passing near you (dates here), be sure to check him out!

I host and organise a band night in Leeds called the Sunday Service.  It’s a free night at Verve bar in Leeds on the last Sunday of every month and our mantra is to champion the cream of the North’s singer songwriter talent and pay them in beer and pictures.  It’s always a great night where music fans come to respectfully listen to good music, and bands play all the better in that listening environment!

We’ve a really special act coming up from London for Septembers Sunday Service on the 25th, and his name is Nick Mulvey.

We’ve had him play twice before and he’s absolutely amazing, laying out a wicked blend of acoustically African inspired, lyrically London life experiences, with a cheeky and technically mind-blowing delivery.  If you’re around in Leeds on the 25th, be sure to come on down.

But Nick’s coming made me wonder if I’d blogged the past few Sunday Service highlights, and I hadn’t.

So here are a few of my faves…

We had the excellent LeeSun play a few SS’s backShe brought her key’s player along and I like how they both looked in this bronzy colour tone.These guys were called the Roman EmpireAny band that brings banjos & ukuleles are good with me.Child size yellow glockenspiels and maraca’s all the betterThat night we had the John Palmer band wrap the night up.

A bit of a close detail.The last SS we had opened up with Craig Bevan, a skill Leeds singer-songwriter.It’s all about the shoe shots.

2nd up we had my good pal Davey Rees AKA Pilla.
This guy’s simply brilliant, and once you get one of his CDs playing in your car or on the iPod, you’ll listen to it over and over and over.

I swear, his music is CLASS.

Check out his live recordings on his YouTube Channel here.We wrapped up the last one with another Sunday Service stallwort, Richie Bower, AKA: Palooka.Rich has been coming out with some genius new material over the course of this year, and he and Pilla have been playing all over Leeds.If you see either of those names about, be sure to check them out.

I love the fact that at my band night I can light the acts.  Not overly, just with a couple of strategically placed desklamps really, but I can then get acts that are better than might normally play a free unpaid night, by supplying some tasty pics.

It’s win win.

A bit of larvely flare from the backlight.

So as I said, if you’re around on the 25th, or fancy making a trip to see what might be the best night of acoustic goodness you might ever hear, be sure to get to the Sunday Service at Verve Bar in Leeds round 8pm.

Party on.

B

I just realised I never posted images from the Roy Ayers gig I shot at The Wardrobe a few weeks back.

Occasionally, The Wardrobe ask me down to shoot gigs when they’ve special acts on

I was excited when they asked me down to snap Roy Ayers & Pete Rock!Gigs are downstairs and queues were out the door.
I believe it was totally sold out.

Roy Ayer’s is a total legend.  He’s not only an American funk, soul & jazz composer, but is possibly the most famous vibraphone player around.

This tour he played with the infamous DJ & rapper Pete Rock (who’s real name is the arguably less exciting Peter Philips!).

Leeds was the opening night of the tour & a good time was had by all.Roy had brought along some seasoned pros to groove along with himRoy seemed to be enjoying himself playing the triangle for the first couple of tracks!

Back in the 70′s he wrote classics like “Everybody Loves the Sunshine” & “Runnin’ Away” – both ace tunes.I wanted to get a shot of him pummelling his vibes.

Pete seemed to be enjoying himself too.  It was all very chilled.

If you ask me, you can’t have too much cowbell.A sea of iphones shooting poor quality smudgy snaps.I liked this one of Pete.

Apparently, he’s widely recognized as one of the greatest hip hop producers of all time

It was a wicked gig all round.

I do enjoy shooting live music; all the more so when it’s an old legend like Roy.

I wouldn’t say I was proud to admit that I recently went to see Take That live on their ‘Progress’ Tour in Manchester, but after hearing all round amazing reports of the Circle tour (from my Take That obsessed girlfriend as well as more impartial others), as well as Robbie William’s return for this tour, I was definitely interested to see what they’d pull out from up their sleeves.  Plus we got to go to Hard Rock Cafe for burgers & shakes beforehand!

Opening the show were the Pet Shop Boys, who did a reasonable job of bringing the stage to life with some old faves, in spite of the drizzly weather.

Eventually, and to the delight of many a female around me, out popped the awesome foursome.

With all the screaming, I suspect Dog’s for miles around wouldn’t know which way was up.

I was quite impressed by the white bubble machine they had sending huge white bubbles skyward.

I like the fact that the higher ones have caught the sunlight. 

After a few of the newer hits from the more recent 4 piece Take That, out came Mr Williams for his turn; trying his damnedest to live up to his Ego.

At one stage he climbed aboard a crane thing to shake a few hands.

I did think he was gonna get pulled in at one stage.

Then as dusk began to set in, the stage began to take to life.

The full band appeared atop the stage to sing ‘The Flood’, before Robbie dived off & the band were lowered down.

Although it felt a bit like he shouted his way through his songs, it was great to see cheeky Robbie do his thing.

I’d say overall as a gig went, it was a bit scrappy and bitty.  It was delivered in 3 parts; 4-piece > Robbie > full-band; which should have been ok, but someone decided there should be a massive costume change between every 2 songs. There was a pointless mad scientist character, filling gaps, a waterfall down the stage and a giant robot, that although it finally stood up, seemed really to serve no purpose what-so-ever.  Although I went in with an open mind, it seemed apart from the band reuniting, the show was a kind of themeless mess of half baked ideas.  I could imagine the planners sitting round a boardroom throwing loads of ideas in, and someone just said, “LET’S DO THEM ALL!”  But then it became a bit flabby and disjointed.  I genuinely went in with an open mind, but was a bit disappointed compared to how great the Circus tour sounded great (which had a thematically consistency throughout).

So there you are!  But gig aside, it was also interesting to see how my Canon IXUS 1000HS compact performed in a low light gig scenario.

It’s great how popular photography’s become these days, and how everyone wants to photograph everything they do, & to share it online.

Problem is, over half of the folk in the shot above will end up with a bab blurry picture.  Why?  Because they don’t understand how their camera thinks.

So if you’ll indulge, let me talk a bit about how I advise people to photograph a gig on a compact camera…

Part of the stage was a giant Robot that moved about, at times acting as a seat for the band to croon to a foxy ballerina.  It really helped to have a 10x zoom on my IXUS really, to get in close on the action.  A long lens is a nice feature on a compact camera, but often the longer lenses don’t go as wide angle.

As with most compact cameras, the IXUS has no manual shooting mode. But it’s still possible to control most of the important variables to get great pics in camera.

When I’m shooting with a compact at a gig like this, you need to realise that when a camera sees darkness it wants to make it brighter to get what it thinks is correct exposure.  Just as how shooting into the sun the camera sees brightness and wants to make the image darker.

In that crowd shot above, you can see all those little flashes going off, but they simply won’t fire enough to light anything.  As well as trying the flash, most cameras also combat dark scenes by dialling in slow shutter speeds, which hand held end up blurry.  Even with a tripod these could get a crisp image, but subject movement then becomes a blur.

So what’s the solution?  Dial up the ISO to make the camera more sensitive to low light?  Yes and no. Higher ISOs lead to grainier images, but faster shutter speeds, but the problem remains that the camera still wants to make the dark scene bright.

Many compact cameras are brimming with sometimes unnecessarily sophisticated features, buried deep in menu’s the general consumer doesn’t often delve.  One feature often found in all but really basic cameras is ‘Exposure Compensation’.  If you ‘dial up’ exposure compensation (toward to the +), it forces the camera to over-expose the image (ie. make it brighter).  If you ‘dial down’ (toward the minu) it tells the camera that whatever exposure it thinks it should be, to make it the amount you dial down darker.  Generally you can dial in up to +2/-2 stops of latitude.

So for a shot like this, (not an award winning image by any stretch), I’ll have dialed down by a full -2 stops, and set my ISO up high to 1600 ISO, turned off the flash and put the camera on burst mode and squeezed three out, in the hope that one would be better than the other two.

[I know that anything over 1600ISO on my compact looks horribly noisy, so I generally don't crank it any further, so do some tests on your camera]

Any photographic exposure is a combination of ISO, shutter speed and aperture.  As nice as it is to have a fast aperture compact (eg the Canon S90 with it’s f2 lens); but aperture doesn’t make as significant difference in compact cameras as it does on SLRs in creating sharp subjects and blurry backgrounds).  So even though there’s no manual control of all these variables, by setting a high ISO and dialling down the exposure compensation, I’ve I’ve controlled two major variables – sensitivity (which in turn affects usable shutter speeds) and exposure compensation (again, speeding up the shutter speeds to make them more holdable).

I can then press the shutter half way to focus on a bright contrasty part of the scene (good to gain a meter reading and to lock focus onto) and see the shutter speed it chooses on the camera LCD.  If it’s over 1/50th or 1/100th of a second, I know I should be cool to get a sharp image.

Plus, you can always see it on the back, zoom in & check it’s crispy.

So there you are: bit jumbled, but basically my tips for shooting a gig on a compact are:

> Flash < turn it off.  It’ll do nothing but light the person in front of you’s head anyhoos.

> ISO < dial it up (but generally not to the camera’s max ISO, as it’s generally horribly noisy)

> Exposure Compensation < dial it down as the overall scene darkens

> Shutter < keep an eye on the shutter speed to see if it’s holdable (over 1/100th is good)

> Burst Mode < set it to take a sequence, and take a few of each, in case one’s blurry.

But at the end of the day (and now for the biggest secret to help people think you’re a good photographer!) only show people your very best images!

No-one want to see the chaff, even if it is a shot of Gary and the boys…

Last week, after the fun of the Leeds College of Music special Radio Leeds with BBC Introducing (post here), I was asked back by the LCM marketing team to start photographing various college events to help bring a new look to their upcoming prospectus.  

This event was an interesting one; college music tech students were recording ‘Buffalo Bones‘ (one of the stand out bands of the BBC Introducing show) in The HUB (Holbeck Underground Ballroom), a hidden Lottery Funded arts space in 5 disused railway arches down near water lane.

I’ve never been before and it was a funky little hangout, originally envisaged as a shared space for artists and companies to developing work and ideas.

It was a hive of activity when we arrived, with Buffalo Bones jamming & the students setting up mics all over the show.

I liked the old details around the place.

Check the students looking studious!

I bet it sounded mint, cos they really took the time to hide microphones everywhere.  They we’re sneaking em into neighbouring rooms and floors.

I like this one of the drummers cons.  It was frickin chilly in there and yet he still drummed in his socks

Having come straight from a video shoot I’d been doing all day, I’d forgotten my STE2, so instead of rocking on-camera flash I relyed on natural light.

Fortunately I had my new 24mm f1.4, 50mm f1.4 & 85mm f1.8s in the bag.

I like the HUB chandelier, though I did crack my head on it more than once. 

Busy checking the MacBook Pro to see they’d got what they wanted.

While I squeezed off a fine rock face of Chris, the singer.

Meanwhile Rob, on bass, made an impressively surreal portrait with this Prince Willam mask he found lying about.

I like this one of BB Drummer Petter, from above.

Watching the Tele!

It was cool watching everyone work together and breathe life into this project.

Plus, the Buffalo Bones are actually ace.

A little detail I liked, on the drum mat.

The only image I think, with all three members in one shot.

Hard at work

On both sides

I liked this final image of the students messing about as they packed away the cables…

I’m looking forward to more of this kinda thing.

If you’re in Buffalo Bones, or are one of the students down at the gig, feel free to download all web-ready images in colour & B+W here.

It’s been a while since the Leeds Festival last August Bank Holiday weekend.  I was asked along to shoot it by The Leeds Guide Magazine and I really do enjoy capturing the event & checking out a bunch of (well lit!) new bands.

Just the other day, ‘Becca.h’ commented on on my ‘Leeds Fest part 1′ post (here) asking what happened to part 2?  Truth be told, I’d forgotten all about it!

So here we are… part 2.

[It's been a while since I was there, so forgive me if I can't remember who everyone is!]

Here’s one of Yannis Philippakis (excellent sirname!), the lead singer of art-house punks The Foals.

They were one of the stand out bands for me this year & I’ve since enjoyed their album.

We presspit togs get to stand in the pit, but on stage right I spotted the infamous NME stalwart Danny North lurking in the wings.

He rode the wave with the Kaiser Chiefs & has since made quite the career as a rock tog.

I believe this is the Foals geetar man evidently doing his best to look demonically possessed.

One Night Only were pretty good last year & it was good to see them back going strong (rocking a sharp Dylan-esque look)

Turning back I noticed their fanbase are almost entirely 18-22 year-old girls.

Not that I imaging they complain.

I liked this catch of randoms comparing animal print

The token festival casualty shot!

I preferred last years one of a mashup catching z’s alone at dusk in front of the Monster Yorkshire Pudding stand.

It’s half  way down the 2009 post, which if you’d like to see, click here.

The BBC introducing stage always looks cool at dusk through the fisheye.

I believe these chaps were The Gallops.

If I remember rightly had a ridiculously good drummer.

My memory might be shot on recalling most things, but I pretty much always photograph every musician’s feet I see & can bizarrely always remember who they belong to.

The are the socks of the excellent Caribou.

They were ace.

I particularly liked the double back to back drumkit action.

Here be The Klaxons.  I’ve never been a huge fan, and they dress better than they sound.

Finally, I wrapped up the night snapping British Sea Power

Bizarrely, I went to school with this chap.

They famously like to dress the stage in foliage, and handed out a bunch to their (distinctly less 18-22 year-old girl based) fans.

The leaves do actually make the stage look cool eh?

Here’s their singer, playing right into my outstretched fisheye!

Party!

I hope I get to go again next year…