IRIS at The Attic in UKC (23rd Feb 2011)

IRIS are now a seasoned rock group who regularly headline in various venues across Kent, and hope to in the future cross over to performing at other counties and local festivals. I think they'll make it, eventually. It all about playing at the right time for someone to hear you that can do something about it though! But if you do see they are playing near you, go check them out. I bet you any money their new single "Drain The Ocean" will stay with you as you leave the venue at the end of the night.

Unfortunately for them at this gig, the sound technician was a student sound technician, so it took a good 20 minutes to set up the sound properly without murdering everyone's eardrums with feedback. The excuse was there was a technical fault with some of the equipment (which sounded fine for the non heavy groups playing before them).

As the group were getting ready, so was I... I had my favourite lens on and tested the lighting, which was good... the front lights lit the band up so I thought I'd get some excellent detail shots with some low ISO settings...  you can image my dismay when the lights pointing at the band were turned off, and the lights that point directly at the crowds face came on in full swing. Quite possibly a bad idea as it means every few seconds you squint against the harsh rays of light that emit directly at you. It also meant that I was only getting dark images or bleached out photos... even with RAW post processing the best I could do was bring out a little detail and turn it black and white or eliminate the colour for some compensation. But the detail just wasn't there.

I did manage to try out the Canon 60D's HD recording feature... which I have to say... is brilliant... the only downside was the sound... with only standard mono sound recording inbuilt into the camera, mixed with speakers that managed to mingle low and high frequency sounds into a single monotonous chaos, it sounded god damn awful. Guess I'll have to try again with these guys now they have a new basist. Just fortunate I took some photos before all the lights desensatised my vision.

If you're interested in us photographing live gigs that you have coming up, feel free to take a look at my website.