Hot Chip

Last night I decided to run a camera experiment: in addition to one of my usual cameras, I chucked in my bag an old DSLR from 2005 –let´s call it 'brand C'- just to get a feel of how well would it perform in live music photography conditions.

Even though the results were not as good as what I normally get with my day-to-day camera and I was using a ‘not-so-high-end’ type of lens, my little experiment confirmed my suspicions: people are way too worried about cameras.

At the end of the day is the eye of the photographer and its ability to overcome the specific situations of a difficult shot, regardless of the equipment used. It is also true that every job has to be done using the right tool and that there will be some shots that are impossible to take without the right gear. But let´s not be too focused in technology: let´s just focus in photography!

Changing topics –to the music side of life- Hot Chip was a lot of fun. It felt a bit slow at the start but it was a Wednesday night and it was a good while until the venue was full. Young girls and boys and some fellas up to the mid-thirties were dancing away for most of the show. The lighting was quite pretty at some point -unfortunately right after I was kicked out of the photographer´s pit- with an orangy golden colour and it felt like it was worth it to be there.

The opening band, World´s End Press, was really entertaining too.

I will post the other set of images soon too. Thanks for reading

The Living End

The Living End was probably Melbourne´s biggest bands in the nineties and they had a few pretty successful tours in the USA back then, what helped a lot to establish their international career and spread their music in Europe.

This show was part of the ‘Retrospective Tour’ where the Living End played every song they have ever made, all over 8 shows in Melbourne and a handful of them around the major cities in Australia. Quite a lot of touring just before Christmas, but even though, a lot of them were completely sold out.

Most of the fellow fans at the Corner Hotel knew every single bit of every single song and for those who were newbies, a ‘bio’ documentary was displayed in a massive screen while the band was getting ready. This definitely helped to get the audience excited about the show and singing even before the band came out.

It was fun, quite along their usual lines: sound was really good, they were not major mistakes and heaps of young merry boys went crowd-surfing (and more than one hit the floor pretty hard on the press pit!)

I am quite happy to have had the chance to document this show in their home town where they felt the most confortable. Even more, they admitted to have got in trouble in the past for saying that Sydney sucks compared to Melbs. Too funny…

Thanks for reading.