Rusted Rail at Citóg 8-10-10

More after that jump

FairyFortFour Photovideo

At lengthy last, with the help of Michelle's computer, I've stitched together the photos from the last Fairy Fort night and lined them up and made them play. After much frustration with my own technological limitations I'm relieved to have finally done this. I'm afraid the quality is a bit poor, I tried doing the highest quality at every step but still it ended up pretty blocky. Which is annoying as it really doesn't do Aaron's projections justice at all. Oh well, for now it'll have to do, til I figure out how to make it better (or someone else lends their expertise...)

The song is Yawning Chasm's 'To the Void' - from his 'The Shadow is that Hidden' EP - which is an effortlessly gorgeous tune.

Fairy Fort Four

I've been putting off uploading these photographs cos I've been trying the last few days to make them into a sort of animated video thing, which was my original aim of displaying them but my computer just will not comply. So I'm putting a selection up. Hopefully I'll have figured out before too long how to make an animation using Ubuntu that doesn't practically require me to learn how to write code. Also my computer's pretty broken at this stage.

Basically what I did was set up the camera on a tripod (thanks Aaron) at the back of the room, put it on a long exposure with the remote shutter setting and took photos with the little wireless remote during the course of the night. I think there's something like two and a half hours between the first and last photo and about 2oo photos in all. I should have taken more, and annoyingly managed not to get any photos of the first act of the night - an improv set made up of Alice, Takashi, Tony and myself. But Suzanne video-recorded the performance so there'll be that, and it looks excellent.

Aaron offered to project his slides throughout the evening, and a couple of people took turns pressing the clicky to advance them. Amazing photographs. The projector was aimed at the intersection of two walls and the ceiling, giving the already slightly otherworldly images a further disjointedness. And the colours! Beautiful; really and truly I felt privileged seeing them. The selection of photographs posted here generally have a different one of Aaron's projections in each, though I don't think I photographed every slide change.

Music for Dead Birds (Jimmy solo with Alice McDowell)

Yawning Chasm (with TakashiCarré)

After the music

The exposure spanned two slides in this one, hence the nice double-exposure look to the image on the wall.

Towards the end I went around setting off the flash by hand

"Stance gives you Power"

Tony's kiss goodbye

The last one; Tony's holding up a piece of drum equipment, I don't know why. I like that Liam and Takashi are talking to each other in this one, being the two people who created the best music events this city's seen in the last few years. They're even wearing similar jackets!

Naoto Kawate and The Balky Mule Tour

Yawning Chasm 

Peter Delaney

I can never take many photographs of Peter Delaney's gigs; the shutter makes too much noise. Maybe someday I'll be able to afford a Leica.

The Balky Mule

 

Naoto Kawate

Before/In Between/After

I'm beginning to enjoy take photos at gigs, it's a difficult scenario in terms of doing something different so I suppose I like to concentrate on the things happening around the music as much as the music itself. I've never liked gig photography as a genre, either from the point of view of doing it or looking at it. There's something very shooting-fish-in-a-barrel about it sometimes, especially when the performer is really putting a lot of effort into the visuals. It's like taking photographs of statues; the thing is there to be looked at and just presents the photo-op too easily. So its enjoyable to take photographs of moments in and around the gig. I think maybe I like trying to demystify the process - it's an impossible task because if the music is good enough it'll transcend any other notions easily anyways. But it's fun to try. I suppose the images sum up how I experience live music, which I think is pretty different from this time last year now I've played a few gigs myself. I really do need a quieter camera though if I'm gonna be photographing quieter gigs. This was a really really great night, everybody was on top form and Naoto Kawate was such a joy to listen to; instead of saving the money for a taxi home I bought his cd and walked.