December 2010 Piano Recital Highfields Theatre, Huddersfield

Queensbury Piano teacher Matthew Watts put on a piano concert last night in Huddersfield, at the Highfields Theatre.

Photos are now online for viewing and ordering. Would make an ideal Christmas present! Order now to guarantee delivery before Christmas.

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If you have any questions , problems ordering photos, or would like any of the photographs removing from the galleries - please do not hesitate to contact me: contact@chrisdearnleyphotography.com

Skull Branded Pirates – Leeds Rios

by chris on Apr. 30, 2009 under music photography | news

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.