National Poetry Competition

Highlight: After four years doing this event this is first year I did not feel intimidated by the cultured crowd....

Lowlight: ...although I still felt illiterate...

http://www.allisonmcvety.com/

Fill in:  The cream of the poetry set is crammed into one powder blue, chandaliered, mirrored drawing room of the Saville Club. It is all very sophisticated then there's me, with orders to get anyone that goes through the door, blocking the way at the top of a sweeping staircase,  brandishing my camera and with a visual expression that says 'Your picture or your life'. Most are too refined to say no, either that or they know I am the only thing standing between them and a free drink. As well as quick snap portraits, I have to get the speeches, presentations and general event.

Poets are for me the last bastion of the Arts World resisting the celebrity culture that is insidious in all the other arts. All are individually eccentric/shy/tortured/exuberant or all of the above and interested in everything. Getting in conversation is the biggest hazard of this job. I don't have much time to get documentary photos as the room fills up very quickly. I spent a long time this year with the delightful Allison McVety who just happened to be the winner this year.  

The best perk of this job is listening to the poets read their work even though it all goes straight over my head.

Tech Spec: Getting a good spot to do the headshots is key. I took a chance doing them on the double staircase as it was easy to bypass me by going up the opposite side, but people generally follow each other and once a flow was going it was quite straight forward. The light was great here and the background nicely out of focus once I'd slapped on the 85mm F1.4. Using a prime lens ensured I kept all the shots consistent. 

The presentations for this one are particularly tricky as the poets don't do anything so vulgar as posing for a shot. They slink up modestly, take their prize quickly and evaporate barely looking up so you have to be quick to spot where they are coming from in the crowd and set your focus as the auto focus is not quick enough. 

The group shots also need a lot of manipulation as immediately after the presentations, the key people tend to melt into the crowd so it usually takes at least two of us to round the up and prevent them getting into too deep a conversation otherwise they do not get done or you don't get any other work done just waiting for it to happen. 

I keep a short zoom on for most of the event, set a fairly high ISO - 1600 and use fill in flash. 

For more info:

http://www.poetrysociety.org.uk/content/competitions/npc/

Stan Webb's Chicken Shack

Highlight: My first gig in years that is NOT first three songs no flash!!!!!!!!!!!! And to get the pass we spoke to Stan himself  - no pr, no manager, no promoter - the guy is a legend.

Lowlight: Arriving far too early and paranoid I would not get to front unless I stead my claim to a space early had to sit on hard floor for over 2 hours.

Fill in: I arrived right at the start of the evening to ensure of getting a good spot as the 100 Club is notorious for needing sharp elbows to protect oneself. But as it happens I could have arrived as Stan came on stage as the crowd were a sedate lot. In the main Blues musicians are a lot like Jazz musicians in that you could be sitting on the end of their instruments photographing and they wouldn't notice you. Their audiences tend to be equally laid back and I got talking to a couple of die hard Blues fans - one who had seen Deep Purple play in a pub in Essex at the start of their career so I was truly impressed. Stan himself was charisma personified and it was regret I had to leave before the gig ended in order to get the pictures off.

Tech Spec: The light was pretty saturated which results in soft looking images, but I kept the flash turned off as I did not want to kill the atmosphere. I could vary my viewpoint quite a bit as the audience stood back from the stage, and used a wide angle to get some up front shots and a long lens from the side to get some more atmospheric stuff. 

For editorial: www.gettyimages.co.uk

Sports Relief Call Centre

Highlight: Food! Well it's strictly meant for the volunteers but I was invited to join in the bun fight.

Lowlight: Having to stand on desk and rally the troops to a photograph - always feel a bit of dick doing this. (The legendary Jonathan Morrish is one of the best people you can have for assisting in these affairs. He manages to round people up and has no compunction about raising his voice and pointing and grimacing to get everyone to look in the right direction, but despite all this he still retains a dignity and unflustered air few people manage when they are trying to be composed let alone when they are performing various antics to get a group of people to look in the same direction and smile). 

Fill in: PPL commissioned this shoot last year for Comic Relief when they were selected as the London call centre for donations for the event. This year they were the only London Call centre for Sports Relief.   Volunteers all gather for a crash course in donation taking,  some hearty grub and a group photo taken by yours truly before dispersing to their various stations and proceeding to take calls. It is a mammoth operation, with spot sprites for the first donation, biggest donations taken etc. etc. 

Tech Spec: Most of the work is recording the proceedings, so it is straight forward documentary to capture the hustle and bustle of it all. As the light is pretty good I set the camera to 3200 ISO, F2.8 and fire away trying to capture various characters - they are a shy bunch. For the group shot I stood on the desk and yelled. 

For editorial: www.ppl.co.uk

Girlschool

Highlight: An all girl band - always great for photos.

Lowlight: Pit in Garage - exceedingly small and close to the monitors and I'd forgotten my earplugs.

Fill in: I used to love the Garage as you could use flash and stay fro the whole gig. However it also had a nasty metal bar across the front of the stage and at one particularly crowded event I made the mistake of wrapping my arm around it to try and prevent myself from being pushed over, only to nearly lose my arm altogether when the crowd swayed sideways pushing my body one way and my arm the other. It now has a pit, but this means 3 songs no flash and the lighting rig is really not up for it.

Tech Spec: Being a small stage, the backlights shine straight into the camera and the front lights are not really bright enough to counteract this, so it results in highly back lit diffused images. The best you can hope for is for the lights to be blotted out as much at possible by a head or a guitar. I turned the ISO up quite high as the light on the front was quite dim but this did mean the background burnt out. Great for the dark haired girls but not quite so great for the blondes.

For editorial: www.gettyimages.co.uk

Gillman and Soame - Dunhead prep

Highlight: Rescuing an endangered school desk

Lowlight: Having nowhere to put it.

Fill in: I love learning new stuff so it was with great anticipation I arrived ready to shoot over 30 sports teams consisting of boys from 4 to 11 years old. However I was not prepared for my heartstrings to be pulled by a school desk. The school were having a refit and the old desks were being cast out after years of faithful service. By the time we arrived all of them had been found new owners and were off to a nice retirement in domesticity. All but one! There it sat in the huge hall where a fate of being chopped up that very afternoon awaited so we were informed by the caretaker. My trainer and fellow photographer, Dave, extolled its virtues and lamented he could not fit it into his car, and looking at me said it would easily fit int he boot of my car. I knew we had no room for it having more than our fair share of useless occasional furniture, the result of many a mad spending spree at IKEA, but cries of 'it's piece of history' and 'it'll make a mint on Ebay' together with 'you'll be doing me a favour' front he caretaker I was persuaded to take it home. Dave helped me heave it into my car, and I drove it 30  miles across London, arrived home and it has been bunging up my hallway on its side ever since. I did look on Ebay and you can;t give the damn things away. Did April Fool's Day come early this year....

Tech Spec: The main trick to the small groups was making sure you had the whole group present and when you did ensuring you'd counted the correctly because it was a real headache to get your group all nicely set up and symmetrical only to find you had an extra body to fit in, which means a complete reshuffle.

For editorial: www.gettyimages.co.uk

She Bop a lula

Highlight: Get to see my picture up on a wall

 

Some great rock photographers and me.

 

Lowlight: Get to see my picture up on a wall

Fill in: I have no problem with my pictures being viewed by all and sundry in the papers, magazines, on an album cover or where ever else they may end up. Somehow then, they are serving a purpose; doing a job; providing a need. But putting a photo up in an art gallery as a statement in itself is a whole different story. Then you are saying - hey look at my photo - isn't it great, and you need to have a pretty tough ego to do that - which I have not. I was quite happy to provide Dede with whatever photos she needed to make her exhibition work. She was an old friend and the cause was a good one. However with all the fantastic photographers in her contact book, I was pretty sure that she would not be needing my services. The shock and horror at one of the my pictures actually making the final cut - and the one I least liked - sent me into a state of apoplexy. Still it was done. The big day arrived of the opening night. I was actually in a really bad mood and almost didn't go to the shin dig. But it turned out okay - the other photographers also moaned about their own photos and admired everyone else's and egos were stroked and calmed and placated and it was all in a good cause.

Tech Spec: There is an inverse reciprocal gravitational law in the world of photography. For any given group of photos (N) where x is the photo the photographer (p) likes least, and y is the one they like best, then I = pe/x - p/y where pe is the picture editor, I is the image published and / is the gravitational force. It's a bit like the F-stop scale where the smaller the aperture becomes the larger it's number. The less the photographer likes a picture, the more likely it is to be published. QED. Anyway - go see the exhibition.

http://www.shebopalula.co.uk/

My Life Story

Highlight: Seeing Pat Pope (photographer) and Angel Dahouk (old friend from Poetry Society)- this really is a week for reunion

Lowlight: Queue to get in. No queue jumping here - the photographers are lumped in with the guests - even though we don't get a ticket to see the gig!

Fill in: These days I hardly know anyone in the pit as new music photographers seems to appear exponentially every day and most of the photographers I know have gone on to bigger and better things.  I met Pat Pope when I was at NME, and tried unsuccessfully to emulate his distinctive black and white style. It was great to catch up with him whilst in the pit.

Tech Spec: My Life Story consists of quite a few characters, and as we have to name check all the people in the shot for Getty I had to concentrate on the lead singer only - but he was moving around the stage at a quite a pace and was enough for me to extort all my photography skill in trying to capture him. It was of course three songs no flash and Shepherds Bush Empire is very top lit so even though Jake came to the front a number of times in provocative poses they were not well lit enough to capture.

For editorial: www.gettyimages.co.uk

Lambchop

Highlight: Seeing this band again - haven't photographed them since I was at NME.

Lowlight:  Cap on head!
Fill in: I last shot this band for a feature for NME when there was a line up of over 13 members. I lined them up outside a bus-stop! Quiet and introspective, The barbican was a perfect venue to see them....

Tech Spec: ....but not to photograph. Kurt was sitting side on to the front, and the long length of the stage meant it was impossible to get close enough to shoot him facing the camera. Ended up having to crawl between the rows of seats and popping up between people to grab shots. Having just bought the Nikon V1, I put it onto silent mode so I could shoot without annoying the audience too much. It's small CCD meant my 85mm F1.4 became a 200mm F1.4 so I could get tight views without too much camera shake.

For editorial: www.gettyimages.co.uk