Last night I shot the 2012 Big Day Out sideshow of Foster the People at The Tivoli in Brisbane for both Rave magazine and Everguide. 

Local band Last Dinosaurs supported on the night.

Things have been quiet on the gig front for the past few months as the end of my 2011 saw me shooting a tonne of band portraits, corporate events and weddings. This hasn’t left much time for shooting live music. However my 2012 kicked off a little differently with my first shoot back for the work year covering Alpine at The Zoo. Alpine are a band I had heard small snippets from during the year, but had fallen heavily for during the summer break. Their live show was going to make or break my appreciation for the band as their sound on record works but on stage could easily fall apart with bad mixes or a lackluster ’shoe gazing’ performance.  Luckily, the show was anything but lackluster with both Lou and Phoebe combining an amazing, sultry and energetic energy with almost perfect renditions of their loved and lesser known tracks.

Of course I am not a writer, so just take a look at some of the photos from the night. More photos after the jump…

On Friday I shot The Jezabels in the first of their two shows at Brisbane’s The Tivoli for Everguide and Rave magazine. For the first song the band performed behind a black semi-opaque curtain with each band member back-lit projecting shadows for the duration of the song. Once the curtain dropped photographing lead singer Hayley Mary was an easy task as she strutted around the stage hitting her notes by holding interesting angular poses.

Last week I went along to The Zoo to photograph Dead Letter Cirucs for Everguide. The day before the Ekka public holiday, the show sold out earlier that day, so getting in early to get prime spot was mandatory.

Dead Letter Circus were supported by Closure in Moscow.

Last Friday night Busby Marou played a sold out show at the Old Museum for their Biding My Time tour. Quickly becoming a favoured venue for musicians, the beautiful Old Museum was transformed even further with a lighting treatment of bare globes and rich colour washes. A pleasure to shoot and even more of a pleasure to watch. One thing that I found peculiar though was the quite eclectic crowd that had come along tonight. I could not help make comparisons with some of the female adoring fans and the type that would frequent some of those city pubs that most music goers would tend to avoid. I am not too sure what this says about the band, but everyone seemed to enjoy their night, so I am hoping it is nothing but positives.

A full gallery of the set can be found below.

Things have been a bit hectic over here. In the past two months I have only shot one live gig, and I am finally getting around here to blog the pictures here. Katy Perry at Brisbane Entertainment Centre on the 5th May. As it was a sound desk shoot, and being the short photographer I am, this shoot was a little difficult in timing to get shots through the hands of fans.

At the end of March I photographed the Foo Fighters Flood Relief fundraiser gig for the Vine.

Before the gig I received a call from the band’s management in regards to the possibility of licensing photos for a Japan magazine. I was given the assignment to shoot all members of the band WITH their respective instruments. Once in the pit this task was made a little harder as we were escorted out after only two songs due to the crowd getting a little rowdy.

Fortunately though Sony Japan and the band’s management were happy with the shots and a license was struck for the shot to appear in the May issue of Player magazine. I am still waiting for digital proofs of the inside story images, but for now here is the cover with a link back to the shots in the Vine’s Foo Fighters gallery.

In February I was given the heads up that DZ Deathrays (previously just DZ) were playing a house party at Taringa. I went along thinking it was being filmed for a film clip, however turns out instead it was the audio being recorded for their upcoming EP.

The thing about DZ Deathrays is that they are a live band, a houseparty band even at that. So recording the EP during a live set makes sense. The energy these boys put in during a live set is something I imagine couldn’t easily be replicated in a studio setting.

I popped along from bump in and pre-set recording to document the whole process, something I love doing more so then just shooting gigs.

After the evening I was contacted by the band and their management to use a pic on the cover of their EP. A tearsheet of the cover is here:

The EP is being launched this Friday 1st April at the Woodland Bar. So if you have never checked out a DZ Deathray set, do yourself a favour and head down! Tickets are $12 on the door. Besides the Brisbane date the band are heading to the Shark Bar (Gold Coast), The Tote (Melbourne), Kings Cross Hotel (Sydney) and Ed Castle (Adelaide) in the next few days/ weeks so check out online where you can buy tickets from.

More photos from bump in and the house party set below:

On Friday I was asked to help Sydney based photographer Dan Boud in covering the Brisbane leg of the St Jerome’s Laneway festival. My job was to second shoot, basically trying to catch many of the same artists that Dan was shooting but from a different angle. And also to cover bands that clashed in the timetable.

The day started off incredibly hot, which left most photographers quite drained. Highlights from the day photograhically were !!! (pictured above), Les Savy Fav (who’s reputation for his dynamic and crazy live performances has quickly spread around the country) and personal favourites Holy F*@k and the Jezabels (who I made a point of staying and watching the whole set of).

!!! from man Nic Offer headlined the Inner Sanctum stage and contended the title for the best stagemanship of the festival.

Pipped at the post by crowd favourite Tim Harrington from Les Savy Fav. From the moment the band took to the stage and even before playing a note, Harrington brought the crowd a grotesque yet entertaining show (wrapping a monk style fabric around his genitals like a diaper wit gaffer tape, which he then proceeded to accessories with props from a box on stage, and also during songs disrobed from items of clothing that had ripped during crowd surfing and his general crazy antics on and off stage).

Cloud Control play the Big Sound/ The Zoo stage, the only midly laneway-esque stage in the whole festival.

Holy F@*k bring their experimental electro dance complete with film strip.

Complete with technical difficulties, Gotye plays a difficult set to a mixed crowd.

My current obsession, The Jezabels, headline the Big Sound/ Zoo stage with a laneway full of mesmerised punters.

Confusing most over at the Carpark Stage, Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti played a drug induced/ shambolic psyhcodelic lo fi pop set to a bemused crowd.

On the New Alexandria stage, Two Door Cinema Club were deemed by most to be the stages most enjoyable act. Crowd instantly began to surge, dancing and pumping fists during their set.

More photos below.