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Chickenhawk – Live At Leeds
Quality multi-faceted riff-based noise-monsters Chickenhawk took to centre stage, in the middle of the room, at around 8:30 last night as part of the ‘Live At Leeds‘ event, at The Library Pub in Leeds.
Very loud, and interesting / entertaining. These soothing minstrels produce a big sound, even with their unorthodox ‘drag all the gear into the middle of the room and play as loud as we can’ approach to playing live.
Chickenhawk - The Library - Live at Leeds
Unfortunately, being in the middle of the room meant there was very little ambient light hitting the band so I had to rely solely on the flash , and frequently using it in ‘2nd curtain sync‘ mode to achieve the warmer feel, with the streaks of light while also freezing the action.
For me, this technique is a bit hit and miss – but occasionally I get decent enough results.
Chickenhawk - The Library - Live at Leeds
Chickenhawk - The Library - Live at Leeds
These ‘contrasty’ colourful shots also make pretty good black and white conversions with the noise from the ISO adding to the effect, I think.
Chickenhawk - The Library - Live at Leeds
Chickenhawk - The Library - Live at Leeds
Chickenhawk - The Library - Live at Leeds
Chickenhawk - The Library - Live at Leeds
Chickenhawk - The Library - Live at Leeds
Chickenhawk: http://www.myspace.com/chickenhawk
Liveatleeds: http://www.liveatleeds.com/
Library Pub (leeds): http://www.myspace.com/upstairsatthelibraryleeds
See the rest of the images at my flickr page:
Skull Branded Pirates – Leeds Rios
Yarrgh. Tonight I attended a ‘pirate metal’ gig, that’s right; ‘pirates’ as in Jonny Depp / Orlando Bloom and ‘metal’ as in Metallica Iron Maiden.
Skull Branded Pirates - Leeds Rios - by chrisdearnleyphotography.com
I don’t really understand it as a concept, but the packed out Rios is testament to how popular this genre is.
Graham Wilson of Skull Branded Pirates
The conditions weren’t great for photos, but they rarely are for live music! The venue has its lighting rig set up behind the stage, rather then pointing at the stage, which I find strange as it meant the performers are silhouetted, even to the naked eye, so external flash (Canon Speedlite 430 EX) was used, with a Sto-Fen diffuser. I deviated between pointing the flash directly at the perfomers, and angling it slightly to bounce the light off of surfaces in the room.
Graham Wilson of Skull Branded Pirates
For the on-camera settings, I left the camera on manual for most of the gig and set the shutterspeed to 1/60 and waited, poised, for moments of pirate metal magic. I shot quite a few without the flash, relying only on the ambient light. They didn’t come out so well, but made reasonable black and white conversions.
Leeds Rios - photographed by chrisdearnleyphotography.com
sea monster?
Skull Branded Pirates were thoroughly entertaining, they even had a large sea monster on stage.
Skull Branded Pirates
Check them out on Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/skullbrandedpirates
You can also view the rest of the set of photos at my flickr site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/chrisdearnley/
