Stephen Coates, the lead singer of The Real Tuesday Weld, the only band from White Mischief not yet featured on this blog, in part at least because I only have one other decent photo of them, so I’ve been holding back.
Re the title: For all sorts of reasons, Mr Coates’ performance reminds of nothing quite so much as a strange man of god from a not-quite-normal world, and I think this shot, and its title catch reflect that as best I can manage.
OK, I confess – the commentary in the last two photos about how you almost never see the drummer in photos was just set-up for the this shot of one of Kunta Kinte’s drummers.
Well, not entirely. They have two, and the other went unphotographed (by me, at any rate) because he was in the traditional position at the back of the stage. It seems slightly unfair to me, that one drummer gets to be front of stage while the other languishes at the back, but y’know, I got this photo of a drummer, so I can’t complain too much…
For as long as I’ve been going to Flipron gigs, I’ve been trying to get a decent shot of their keyboard player, and I have finally managed it. I feel that I may now die in peace.
Well, that may be a bit of an exaggeration, but it has proved very hard to get a shot of him that was in focus, without motion blur, and a decent composition. 2 out of three, I have managed several times, but this is the first time I’ve got all three.
Now if I could just do the same for the drummer…
And now, the punters. I do feel slightly uneasy about this – I don’t know these people, and they didn’t sign any release (but on the other hand, they did pose for the eejit with the big camera and the laminate round his neck, so it’s not like it wasn’t clear what was happening). But under UK law, that’s OK, I’m just not allowed to make money off it. Which I’m not doing.
Still, in the unlikely even that anyone reading this recognises these people, do point them this way.
If this is you, then I will be happy to take this down on request, or, indeed, furnish you with a higher res version of this shot if it turns out you like it.
I’m putting this up, prior to a few photos of some of the punters from White Mischief, because this pair gave me a nice approach to the photos of the punters – this high noise, sepia tone effect, like something from an ancient newspaper, as if they were something encountered by a Victorian gentleman explorer in the Dark Continent.
(The reason I wanted a specific approach is that the lighting in the main entrance was a bit of a bastard, and I didn’t want to use flash, so I wanted something that would give me a more flattering approach to the portraiture, that had a bit more wit than just going to black and white. I thought this fit with the tone of the night.)
There’s been a bit of break, while I attempted to get used to working on Mac, and learned to use Lightroom, and a whole new photo processing workflow.
So I’m putting up this shot, which I had planned to run later in the sequence of White Mischief pics, in an attempt to pick up where I left off, as it were.
(Alex, if you’re reading this: There will be a site for you to point performers at on-line by Saturday evening. I have the photos sorted, I just need to put a decent site together, which is a much faster job.)
(Obviously, this is Mademoiselle Fifi again,)
I’ve noticed that the happier I am with a shot, the harder I find it to talk about it. And I’m pretty bloody happy with this one. I would perhaps have liked to bring the details on her face out a bit more, bit it’s go all the essential things I wanted from the shot. I hope you like it.
More from that late night London walk. The title is taken from the name of the bridge to Hell in Norse myth – this is, of course, Blackfriars bridge, where God’s banker, Roberto Calvi was murdered by a Black Lodge of secretive Masons.
(More from White Mischief to come when time permits, but I had this one ready….)
