ASSIGNMENT 5: COVERING AN EVENT

Brief
The brief of this assignment was to plan and photograph an event, to produce a varied portfolio of images of a standard that could be published by an online music website.

The Event
I have selected to photograph the music event of American band Combichrist, with support from Protafield and Controlled Collapse, at the Bristol date of their August 2015 UK tour at The Fleece.

Undertaking the photography

The gig was to take place on a Wednesday evening at popular venue, The Fleece, in the centre of Bristol. The gig was one of only three UK dates on the tour and I was expecting it to be busy. My main pointers to focus on before arriving at the venue were to remember the variety of shots that I was hoping to get on my provisional shot list and to attempt to keep the shots as clear as possible, despite the difficult factors of the venue layout as well as the difficulties with low lighting and possible crowding of fans near the stage. My main priorities were to capture as many clear and diverse photographs of the bands as possible without too much interference and, if possible, try to capture the overall atmosphere of the gig with regards to the music and the audience.

After a delayed start, the photography went rather smoothly, following a few initial technical problems. The first band to take the stage were Polish band Controlled Collapse, followed by Welsh band Protafield and then American headliners Combichrist. I maintained a central position in front of the stage, not directly at the front but as close as my 50mm static lens would allow me. Movement was impossible due to the amount of people in the venue but I found that the front men did enough moving about around the stage to allow for the diverse shots I was hoping for. Unfortunately, the lens and the lighting snuffed out any shots I hoped for of the crowd but with the thought in mind that these photographs would hopefully be published onto an independent music website, the main focus was to photograph the bands themselves. However, I did venture to the back of the room once I was confident I had taken a sufficient amount of close up shots, to take a number of photographs of the stage from the back, attempting to capture some of the audience reactions to the band while they were on stage.

It was important for me to get the images processed and ready for distribution as early as possible following the gig, to make them more desirable to those websites who had no one covering that event and who would be interested in publishing them for the fans who hadn't made it to one of the three shows. I did most of the work the following day. I started by uploading all 484 photos that I had taken into one folder and then separating the different bands into separate folders. I added the initial metadata and then captioned the photos in each of the bands folders.

First selection

After sorting through my images and rejecting the images that were out of focus, had too much motion blurring, were blown out with light or far too dark, I was left with a comfortable 87 photos. I processed my favourite ones as my first selects then picked out a further selection of second selects. My main focus through the process of planning and executing the photography for this assignment was to aim to have the photos published on an independent music website so I had to make sure that the selected images would be suitable and clear enough for that purpose. The images I chose were all processed to be clear and sharp enough yet still representative of the event itself. 

Kuba Sawicki of Controlled Collapse

Wojciech Król of Controlled Collapse

Wojciech Król fo Controlled Collapse

Marek Smolski of Controlled Collapse

Paulina Lewek of Controlled Collapse

Jayce Lewis of Protafield

Jack Slade of Protafield

Jayce Lewis of Protafield

Nikki Trash of Protafield

Martin Thompson of Protafield

Jayce Lewis of Protafield

 Andy LaPlegua of Combichrist

Brent Ashley of Combichrist

Joe Letz of Combichrist

Brent Ashley of Combichrist

Andy LaPlegua of Combichrist

Eric13 of Combichrist

Andy LaPlegua of Combichrist

Second selection
Here are the second selection of images which I will also be emailing to the online independent music websites, should they require them.

Paulina Lewek of Controlled Collapse

Wojciech Król of Controlled Collapse

Jayce Lewis of Protafield

Martin Thompson of Protafield

Jayce Lewis of Protafield

Nikki Trash of Protafield

Nikki Trash of Protafield

Nikki Trash of Protafield

Jayce Lewis of Protafield

Martin Thompson of Protafield

Andy LaPlegua of Combichrist

Andy LaPlegua of Combichrist

Brent Ashley of Combichrist

Brent Ashley of Combichrist

Eric13 of Combichrist

Eric13 of Combichrist

Brent Ashley of Combichrist

Joe Letz of Combichrist

Combichrist - Final song

Publishing Images
I managed to have the images ready to email to possible online publications by the following day and decided to work down my list of rock and metal music websites from my planning stages. I selected six images I felt were good enough to attach to the email for the sites to get an idea of the style of my images. I didn't want to email all the sites at once incase, best case scenario, more than one replied wanting to use them and then I would have to let down all but one. But in the end this is pretty much what I had to do because as the days went by, I was worried that I would have to wait too long for each to reply and then it would've been months later that my images were published and sites would've been less likely to use them. I emailed the first site on August 13th and had a reply the following day declining on the grounds that it wasn't really the type of band they would cover, even though they had before.
So I emailed the next two sites the same day. And heard nothing in return. The next day I emailed another two sites, then another two the day after that and so on until I had emailed them all. Three sites out of them all, not including the first I have mentioned, replied saying they would publish them if I could write a review of the gig too. I wasn't happy to do that and by this point the gig was a few weeks gone so I couldn't remember a lot about it to be able to, so they were a no. But then Indulge-Sound replied and said that they were happy to publish them on their site, as they were, without a review. The email from them asked me to send the high resolution photographs over so I sent the first and second selects plus a couple more and they picked the ones they wanted to use. The images were online two days later.

You can find my images at Indulge-Sound.com at the following links;

Controlled Collapse photos can be found at: http://indulge-sound.com/2015/09/07/photos-controlled-collapse-the-fleece-bristol-12th-august-2015/

Protafield photos can be found at: http://indulge-sound.com/2015/09/07/photos-protafield-the-fleece-bristol-12th-august-2015/

Combichrist photos can be found at:  http://indulge-sound.com/2015/09/07/photos-combichrist-the-fleece-bristol-12th-august-2015/

Conclusion

I am pleased with how smoothly this assignment went, despite the earlier panic about not having an upcoming gig to photograph. I think that my earlier experience of shooting events for publishing on online music publications has really helped me with this assignment as I know the kind of images I was hoping to get that wold hopefully be desirable to these kind of sites. The final images have met the brief, as they have actually been published online and I am truly happy with the outcome.

However, there will always be my own slight criticisms towards my own work. The fact that I don't have to best equipment always plays on my mind and I feel it can come through in my images due to the need for high ISO settings and bright lenses. But then the equipment would be fine in a bigger venue with the space in front of stage, like when you're in the photo pit, as well as lots more light than you get in a smaller venue. So it really is a catch 22 situation.

Working to the tight deadlines wasn't really an issue as I always like to upload and process my images as soon as I can anyway but it did get me thinking about professional photographers. I know at festivals they have press rooms for the photographers to go and upload their images throughout the day between bands to meet the magazine deadlines. I cant imagine that being an easy factor for them, but deadlines are something that most photographers, of all genres, have to deal with and so it's good to get the practice in now.