Heather Findlay – Southampton Nov 2011

From the delectable Heather’s first solo tour since leaving former band Mostly Autumn.   Although I’ve met Heather a few times, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from the show as I’m not that familiar with her solo stuff.  It actually turned out to be an excellent show, and I will certainly be checking out some more of her material.  I also hope to be shooting her again later this week, in Bilston.

The lighting at The Brook was not great.  Lots of red light, and the general light levels were very low – fine for the audience but difficult to photograph.  As a result the images are grainier than I’d have liked, and with no photo pit a lot of these had to be taken with longer lenses, but I hope you like them anyway.

Heather Findlay – Southampton Nov 2011

Joe Bonamassa – Cardiff Oct 2011

Still catching up on my editing.  Here’s a slideshow of pics from Joe Bonamassa’s show in Cardiff last month.  It was his first gig back after a bout of ‘flu, but you’d never have guessed as he pulled off one of the best shows I’ve seen from him.  Excellent gig.

Joe Bonamassa – Cardiff Oct 2011

Firefest 2011

For those not already acquainted with it, Firefest is an amazing annual indoor rock festival in the UK featuring some of the best melodic rock bands around.   As one of the official photographers at Firefest I was able to shoot the whole set of all eighteen bands who played this year.  Here is the complete set of slideshows/galleries, in the order that the bands played….

FRIDAY
Serpentine
Houston
Terry Brock
Jimi Jamison

SATURDAY
Talon
VEGA
Silent rage
Jeff Paris
W.E.T.
Strangeways
Steve Augeri

SUNDAY
Newman
White Widdow
Kane Roberts
Alien
Mitch Malloy
Coney Hatch
Unruly Child

There are between 50 and 100 images in each slideshow, totalling over 1,000 fully edited images in all. A very small selection of them will be available soon as large prints or canvasses, with 50% of the proceeds going to Firefest to help fund future shows.

Blackmore’s Night – Birmingham 5th Oct 2011

On Wednesday I went up to Birmingham to shoot Blackmore’s Night in concert. It’s a slightly unusual show, a mixture of medieval, folk, classical and acoustic rock, on a stage dressed up to look like a wooded glade, performed by men in tights and fronted by the beautiful, charming and pure toned Candice Night.

I was shooting the show on behalf of Midlands Rocks, and only had the first two songs in which to get my pictures. Not quite sure what to expect, I was pleasantly surprised at the high tempo of many of the songs, the warmth of Candice’s interaction with the audience, and the virtuosity of Ritchie Blackmore’s guitar (and lute and lyre and no end of other instruments) playing.

Here are my pics from the show… Blackmore’s Night – Birmingham Oct 2011

Thin Lizzy – Swindon June 2011

Thin Lizzy

Still catching up on my editing. Here’s Thin Lizzy at their show in my home town Swindon. Gigs like this are why I love concert photography. Wonderful dramatic lighting.

Thin Lizzy – Swindon

Album Covers

Here are three more albums, all comprising exclusively my photos on the cover. They are from Strangeways, Bangalore Choire and Shotgun Symphony, three excellent melodic rock bands, and are all live performances from last years’s Firefest rock festival.

The albums are available to purchase now from shop on the Firefest website.

I’m really looking forward to the challenge of shooting this year’s festival next month.

Styx – Manchester June 2011

After a fairly chaotic month, I’m finally starting to catch up with editing concerts from previous months. Here’s a few pics from the Styx show in Manchester early in June, when they supported Foreigner and Journey. They are a great band to photograph because they are very aware of their image and work together on stage as a unit.

Styx – Manchester June 2011

Thunder – High Voltage 2011

I was fortunate to be able to have full access to the stage during Thunder’s magnificent return to the stage at this year’s High Voltage festival. By most people’s reckoning they were the band of the weekend, with the biggest crowd and by far the biggest queue for the autograph session afterwards. I can’t put online my slideshow of the full set yet, as we may have other plans for many of the images, but here’s a taster…

Foreigner – UK tour June 2011

I’m Slowly catching up on my backlog of concert photo editing.  Here are some shots of Foreigner on their recent tour in the UK with Journey and Styx.

Foreigner tour in the UK, June 2011

I was at the Wembley, Birmingham and Manchester shows, working with Journey, but only managed to catch about 15 minutes of Foreigner at Wembley and about 45 minutes at Manchester.  Nevertheless they were very impressive, and certainly wowed the audience.

Concert For Japan

Back in May I was involved in a charity rock concert in Birdwell, to raise money for the victims of the Japan earthquake and tsunami. There were seven bands playing throughout the day, each of which put on a great show. Here are my pics …

Concert For Japan