Winter in Eden - Factories, nettles, freezing rain and how to be a Social Fake

North East England. Winter. What a great time for an outdoor photoshoot… More on that later.

The band are Winter in Eden and this shoot was a reunion of sorts as I first photographed the band back in 2011 for their album “Echoes of Betrayal” at the beautiful Belsay Hall in Northumberland. The image below was used on the CD and was also a poster with a special edition of the album.

Back to now and the band have had a line-up change and had a new album on the horizon, “Social Fake.” The band were clear on a concept, the album cover showed a bio-mechanical wolf in a landscape that looked authentic but revealed man-made electronic elements. A plan was born to shoot in a factory where I could use lighting to create a sci-fi aspect to the backgground of an industrial setting. The lighting would mirror the tones used in the album artwork.

We scouted the factory and I found some nice little places where lighting would work well against backgrounds that I could manipulate later in post-production.

Location scouted and all systems go for the following week.

As this was the first major shoot using a new EOS R Series camera, Canon UK kindly loaned me one of the new RF Lenses. I decided to not request some of the more exotic glass on offer and stick to only what was needed for this shoot (given that I was using my own lighting and didn’t need low-light capability) and opted for the 24-105 L Series. The wide capabilities of this lens and the zoom reach would give me everything I would need in this environment and the 8 stop image stabilisation would be a huge bonus.

Thank you Canon UK for the loner. Your generosity worked, it was so good I bought one!

And here are the results from inside the factory. Little did they know, I had another plan…

During the earlier scout I noticed a very large nettle field with a completely overgrown bus shelter (!) inside. It looked bizarre and strangely compelling… Mmmm.

As we were wrapping up inside I asked Vicky if she would be brave enough to battle the elements and do a quick shoot outside in the nettles (Vicky was the person with the no long trousers and no long sleeves - I assumed the others would do as they were told)! After promising to turn any blue-with-cold exposed skin to a more natural colour in Photoshop Vicky and the band fully committed!

This was from a week earlier. Winter arrived in the meantime.

So, the scene was set, lighting installed, nettles poised to sting. Then the rain started. It’s okay though, I had a fully waterproof winter coat on. Toasty. Joking aside, I quickly fired off a few shots and got everyone inside quickly. We all had a bit of a “was it worth it” moment until we saw the images on the back of the camera. We all agreed, this was the one…

The band used this as the main image on the huge fold-out album insert for “Social Fake” and the image was picked up by Canon EOS Magazine as a showcase for off-camera lighting in the April ‘22 edition.

Download 2019

Download 2019: My first time at Download ever and very cool to be there with Vega. As they hadn’t played there either the brief was simple, see what happens and get the shot!

It was a long day, lots of travelling and some trepidation when we got there because of the previous days rain and well publicised mud baths. But the sun shines on the righteous and the shine it did. None of us knew what to expect when we arrived, it was likely that we would be kept away from the main acts, perhaps even not in the same postcode as them as it’s such a vast place with very tight security zones. How wrong we were - full access, all day, meals included! It was surreal to share a backstage cafe with Matt Sorum of Guns & Roses/Deadland Ritual/The Cult and great to say hi again to Steve Stevens who was in the same queue for coffee as I was! Hell, we even got on the same shuttle bus as Geezer Butler…

Skynd

I made a conscious decision not to run around everywhere with my camera that day. For one, it just wasn’t cool pointing a DSLR at the artists backstage. They didn’t know me and trust has to be built. Secondly, I wanted to be present. To be backstage at Download was a huge privilege and I wanted to savour every moment and I’m so glad I did just that.

The band on immediately before Vega were an industrial/alternative band called SKYND. I shot these to get warmed up and in the zone prior to Vega and I’m so glad I did, what a visual feast they were! I admit that a band using triggered samples to songs solely about the escapades of serial killers probably wouldn’t have attracted me to a gig anytime soon but you live and learn, they were great! Scary, enigmatic, smart and exciting - band members named only Mother and Father and both masked and seriously creepy - and this was a daytime show!

This looked interesting and the best was yet to come…

How can you follow that? Vega did and did it superbly. The Dogtooth Stage clearly proved to be a melting pot of styles with each act. While capturing the behind-the-scenes shots of them setting up it was clear that there was some uncertainty about modern rock following industrial metal but Download and its crowd are more than diverse, they are positively welcoming. Vega, it would turn out, had nothing to fear.

Getting back to the brief, I asked if the band wanted a crowd shot at the end of their set. “ I dunno” said Nick, “depends how we go down.” Well, after just one song it was clear to me that a crowd shot from the drum riser was definitely going to happen and I clearly didn’t need to wait for any signal from the singer to take my mark.

Epic and triumphant…

This final shot says it all. Vega played against some of the best bands in the world that day and packed out their stage. The sun was shining, Whitesnake were playing on the Main Stage, Opeth just next door yet Vega pulled in a packed audience to their indoor stage with no room to spare.

Look out for their new album coming in 2020, the photoshoot for it is booked and I’m ready to tour again when they are (perhaps this time I won’t break my knee…but that’s another story)!

Vega with a few thousand of their closest friends.

Studio Shoot with Singer/Songwriter Issa

Recently I was contacted by Singer/Songwriter Issa to quickly come up with a set of images to support her album “Run with the Pack” which was being released in just six weeks time.  Apparently a photoshoot in Italy a few weeks before hadn’t yielded the results required so a quick turnaround was needed back in the UK!

Issa’s studio of choice was York Photography Studio and all manner of technical wizardry was on hand as part of the hire.  I normally shoot on location with only the equipment I can carry (and usually with just a few minutes to set up and shoot for most bands on a tour schedule) so it was a major bonus to have a full array of grip gear, backgrounds and even costume changes all on hand (for Issa, not for me).   With Elara Christie as my assistant for the shoot too I knew that this was going to be a load of fun.

Having been very impressed by the wonderful work of Jake Hicks I wanted to use the opportunity of a full studio shoot to utilise coloured gelled portrait lighting.  I’m well used to using coloured flash lighting in many of my band shoots (as can be seen in my portfolio) but much less so for portraiture.  Jake is an excellent educator as well as photographer which inspired me to use this approach.

For most of the shoot I used a four light set up.  Two gelled strip diffusers as side lights (one red, the other yellow), one blue gelled softbox at ground level to the front and a gridded key light beauty dish 45 degrees above Issa.  The blue softbox to the front was used not to remove shadows but to turn them subtly blue.  This, combined with the other colours combined to give an unusual and interesting colour pallet for a portrait - totally in keeping with the rock-star persona!

By feathering (moving the light slightly, varying the amount of light hitting Issa) the coloured side diffusers were used to emphasise more or less of the two colours involved.  I think that these two images showing predominantly red were favourites of mine from the shoot.  I love the sci-fi-esque  look of these too.

Re-touching was used post-production for all images but I wanted to add a little more to one or two just to give Issa and the record company, Frontiers, more options when making their selections.

We, as a team, were very happy with the results from that evening and Frontiers went on to use the images as both the album cover and for the booklet shots.  It’s always very, very exciting to go into a record store and pick up a record with my photographs featured, not least the cover shot!

Finally, Issa has used other images from the shoot as publicity photographs and these have been selected by various national music magazines in their interviews, features and reviews of her excellent album which you can buy here. 

Jake Hicks runs some amazing photography courses and forthcoming events are listed here.

9 out of 10!

Vega at Monnow Valley Recording Studios

The images I'm talking about today were taken in the main recording room at Monnow Valley studios, famous for being the recording and rehearsal venue of such artists as Queen, Black Sabbath, Oasis, Stereophonics and many many more.

I broke out the camera while James was practicing a passage for a track on the Vega album "Who We Are".  The ambient light in the room (at this time of night) was very poor and I knew I needed to add light in order to get a good result.  I was after a subtle and tranquil photograph to match the passage that James was playing.  Here is a shot of the rather dull and plain ambient light as seen in the room:

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Photograph without any additional lighting.

To rectify this I added a speedlight flash to the windowsill by the side of the piano.  I placed this here during a break in practice.  In truth, it was an experiment - I knew it would add light but wasn't sure how it would look on James' face.  Here is the test of the flash while James was away:

I liked the play of light on the window and was pleased that it didn't add too much to the dark walls as I wanted to keep the moody contrast.  James soon returned and here is what turned out to be the final shot.  The light caught James' face very well and didn't illuminate too much of the rest of the room at all.  I changed it to monochrome as the tungsten light from the lamp clashed with the rather daylight balanced flash light.

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Proud of this one, like it a lot.