These Kings. These Subterraneans

My good friend and Kage Collective accomplice Patrick La Roque never ceases to amaze. Can there be no end to this man's talents? Just where he finds the time, I don't know. But on top of everything else, he's only gone and produced an outstanding multimedia extravaganza called 'These Kings. These Subterraneans.'. Not only is this Patrick's second e-book (1 eye Roaming is HERE), but he's also wrote, recorded and performed an album of music to go with it. This isn't just a bit of music that's been thrown together to go with some pretty pictures. The album stands up on it's own with content and production that would sit well on any music store.

PLmixed_media700

But let's not forget, Patrick is a photographer and if you follow his work you will know he has a unique style and vision. He also has a gift when it comes to words. A modern day poet who starts where Jim Morrison left off with American Prayer, takes up the torch and runs. These Kings. These Subterraneans was born out of a difficult family situation that Patrick has been going through for a while and that's what makes this work so strong.

Click HERE to visit the dedicated page on Patrick's site where you can find out more and download the full multimedia content. Incidentally, this is the first project out under the new Kage Editions umbrella.

Makoto Ozone & The SNJO :: Jeunehomme CD

I've been shooting Project Jazz now for over two years. The project started as a one-off shoot with The Scottish National Jazz Orchestra to feature as a story on The Kage Collective website, but it quickly grew legs as a long term project with no end. My love of jazz and mutual interest with orchestra leader Tommy Smith in documenting the scene has just naturally evolved into something bigger and more important than originally planned.

One of the offshoots from doing all this work with the jazz orchestra is to have my pictures used in promotional pieces and album covers. I covered the recording session with the SNJO and saxophonist Bobby Wellins for the Culloden Moor Suit CD and those pictures were used on the inside cover. More recently the live recording of guest pianist Makoto Ozone was released as a CD with the strange title of Jeunehomme. My photographs from that concert were used exclusively for the CD. I used two copies of the CD for the photo below. The CD is on sale HERE

The cover shot was taken with the 56mm lens at f1.2. I focused on Makoto's hands because he is a pianist and those fingers are where the magic comes from. I had already shot saxophonist Courtney Pine from the same position the month previous, so I knew I could get enough shallow depth of field creaminess at f1.2 to make his hands stand out.

There's a lot of work involved in shooting these gigs and spending days in Lightroom editing, but it really is a labour of love and something I see as important. I've stood alone backstage with many amazing musicians just before they walked on stage, and I've been a fly on the wall to some great musical moments and it's all down to a camera.

This is the only wide angle shot from Jeunehomme. It was taken with the XF 14mm f2.8, a lens that I no longer own as I upgraded to the newer 16mm f1.4. I'll miss the 14mm, but I need the faster lens more than I need that extra couple of mm. Plus, the 16mm comes in at 24mm in full frame terms and that's a focal length I've always liked. My last shoot with the 14mm (the day the 16mm arrived) was actually at the recording session with The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra for Tommy Smiths latest project. More on that very soon.

Project Jazz :: Instrumental Interview

I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Michael at INSTRUMENTAL recently. The interview was about Project Jazz, my long term project to document today's jazz scene. Michael asked a lot of great questions that forced me to think a little deeper than I had about this project. I also had to go through the jazz pictures that I've shoot in the last 12 months and look at them from more of a portfolio point of view, rather than during the editing phase. I'm very pleased with what I have so far and I can see a nice body of work coming together.

My aim with Project Jazz is to carry on the tradition of shooting black and white photographs of jazz musicians in the same way as the great players of the 40’s, 50's and 60's were captured. If you haven't had the chance to see some of these pictures, you can have a look HERE and the Instrumental interview is available HERE.

View From My Keys :: 14th March 2013

Here's some shots from last night. Back on the road tomorrow, so maybe more to come on Sunday or Monday. All these shots were taken with the X-Pro1, 35mm f1.4 at 1600 ISO.

X-Pro1 At 3200 ISO:: Belladrum Festival

There's no fear at shooting 3200 iso with the X-Pro1! There's also no fear shooting at wide apertures, you just simply compose and let the camera do the rest. This first shot was at f2 and 1/60 of a second. I was shooting the performers in the background playing with fire, but I found the foreground more interesting.

The photo of the crowd (above) was shot at f2.8 and 1/125th of a second. As Travis performed on stage, whipping the crowd into a frenzy, the X-Pro1 performed on the ground.

I don't know the name of this comedian, but he was a pretty funny guy. If only the crowd were as good!

I could have shot photos of this comedian all night long.

Not something you see everyday...not on this planet anyway.

This shot was taken at f 1.4 and 1/30th of a second. With a full frame eqivelent of a 50mm,  1/30th is half the shutter speed that you would need to shoot this on a DSLR. Another great reason to shot mirror-less cameras.

This last shot was taken with the 18mm at f2 and 1/30th of a second. I wouldn't dream of shooting this sort of event with a DSLR, not with mine anyway! Have a look at more black and white 3200 iso shots on my street photography blog 35mmStreet

View From My Keys :: 29th April 2012

This installment of View From My Keys is based around guitar machine heads. For those that don't know one end of a guitar from another, machine heads are those 6 (in this case) knobs that are used to turn gears, that in turn twist the posts that hold the strings. As the strings are tightened the pitch rises.

From a photography view, these were all shot with the X-Pro1 at 1/60th of a sec at f1.4 and 1600 ISO. I edited the three photos in Lightroom 4 using a split tone preset that I made recently for my wedding photography.

These shots were taken at AM Rehearsasl which is one of the best equipped and spacious studios in Scotland.

Monsters Ball Of Confusion

I recently posted a black & white photo story called Born This Way on my documentary website, but I thought I'd share a few colour shots here that I didn't use.

View From My Keys :: 18th Feb 2012

When I started playing sax I thought it would be great to just show-up, open my case and play. Fast forward a lot of years and I'm surrounded by a full music shop. Tenor sax, Guitar, 3 synths and 2 FX units. The laptop controls projections on a 7' circular screen.

One hour before showtime and the souncheck begins.

It's easy to see why he was such a successful male model. You might remember him from the Calvin Klein adds?

The gig begins. This is what we see from the stage a lot of the time, the audience is out there, but we see darkness.