BIMM Live took place at The Night Owl venue last week on Thursday night. It was an opportunity to get across to Digbeth and see the band Wooden Dog strutting their stuff on the stage in front of their course mates and lecturers. BIMM Birmingham is a performers university and the bands and artists are all studying for a degree, and we as the Uni of Wolverhampton have been collaborating with them for this academic year’s brief. This was my last chance to see the band live and capture some photos to include in my work to submit for the year.
Arrival
The doors were open at 6:30pm and then the music would start at 7pm so I aimed to get there for 7:30 as the band I was photographing were due on a bit later. Sam had given us the details for parking in Bradford Street car park as it was close to the venue so I parked up in the dark opposite the Anchor Pub and headed out with my backpack on. In that bag was my Canon 5D MkIV and a Leica Q3. I also had flashes for each but didn’t think I’d use them unless it was particularly dark.
Heading up the street to the front door of the venue I had a call from Brian, my course mate and compatriot in band photography, to say that he was on his way. As I walked to the front door I could hear Wooden Dog singing one of their repertoire so tried to get in quickly. The Security guard asked to check my bag to see what was in it, and then I had to put on a wristband. Pulling out my 5D I aimed it with the 24-105mm lens on at the stage and captured three, not very good, photos of them on the stage before they finished and then started packing up.
Missing The Boat
I said hello to the band members and apologised for being late then decided that as I had paid for three hours parking and had some spare time I might as well stay and catch some photos of the other acts. I was milling around at the front of the stage, taking it turns with another photographer to not get in each other’s way. He was grabbing the bands as they came off stage and asking for them to have a photo in the alleyway by the toilets which would be a great shot. I didn’t feel like I could get in on the action so decided to leave it as it was and just take the images of the bands on stage.
Hanging Around
There were a number of acts that took it in turns to go through their two songs, some of them were folky, some hip-hop, some poppy like Taylor Swift and others a little more grungier like Avril Lavigne. There were a couple of heavy hitting bands too who were super animated on the stage and easy to catch photos of as they got on and did their thing.
The lighting was not too bad and I took a few photos of each act from different sides of the stage and also some from just behind the stage in the sound booth area although I was careful not to step anywhere I shouldn’t.
The photos were tricky to capture as the light was a bit poor in the venue and I was trying to hold off on the shutter speed going below 1/125. The ISO was on Auto with an aperture of around f/4, I could have opened up the aperture to make it faster but then I would have lost front to back depth of field details. In some shots I wanted this, to focus on the singer and have the blurred out bass player in the background.
On The Pull
About halfway through I started to play with zoom pull on my 24-105 Canon lens to get a more dynamic effect of the band on the stage. One of the bands, Histra, were very dynamic performers and the singer/keyboard player was jumping all over the place. I took a photo or too from the side of the stage and then went to stand behind the audience and repeated a few times to see if I could get a zoom pull effect. A couple of them turned out ok and gave me a good effect of the person in the centre of the frame and then everything else motion blurring toward the camera, like a Star Wars star field when in Hyperspace.
Another band arrived on stage and there were a few band members on there so I stayed where I was and moved to the side to try another shot using zoom pull. The singer was practically in the centre and I found this gave better results, with the look of chaos and dynamics. It shows the light and action around the lead singer and takes out the detail of the faces of the other band members.
Portrait
I did a few more, less dynamic photos and more classical single person shots of a guitarist with their instrument, or a singer screaming into the microphone but these photos don’t give the impression of a full venue with the people dancing and singing along where they know the lyrics.
Some shots were bathed in red light and odd green light so they looked improved by going back into black and white in Lightroom. Some of the other shots I decided to leave as colour as they looked flat and uninviting with zero colour. Many of the colour photos look as though I have upped the saturation or the intensity but I’ve not really edited else other than the exposures and the cropping of certain images.
I also tried a couple of images that weren’t whole person photos, such as hands on a keyboard, or guitar, even a pair of socks on a keyboard pedal, but it was tricky to get close to the drummers as the kit was always set up at the rear of the stage and shielded from view by guitarists or bassists…
A couple of the solo artists were joined by bands also so I tried to stay on the front person with a couple of images now and again of the supporting team that were helping them get through the evening.
I had to leave at around 10:15pm as the car park was running out and I needed to be up the next day for a trip to Birmingham Symphony Hall to see my wife perform with her choir. I had another hour at least on the road to get home so said goodbye to the Wooden Dog Band members and tried to get back to my car without being mugged for the gear in my back pack. I had decided to leave the Q3 in the bag as I didn’t want to be seen flashing it around and I wasn’t going to see many opportunities with it anyway.
Some of these photos will go into my journal here, and also into my presentation to be submitted to Sam at the end of the academic year for this module.
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