Well hello again, long time no see?

I’ve been neglecting my site recently, only visiting to get rid of some of the spam that’s been building up. Between the new job and Modern Warfare 2, I’ve been kept pretty busy. I did manage to sneak in one gig, and one which surprised me. Let me explain.

I’ve photographed The Xylophone Race once before — they were playing at the Ironworks in Inverness sharing the bill with a few other bands — and I couldn’t help but be very impressed. It’s very rare seeing such a young group playing the kind of funk/rock hybrid, and even rarer seeing it played was well as they do. So when they asked if I could shoot a few more shots for them at the Loft in Dingwall, I jumped at the chance.

What I didn’t realize is that Dingwall isn’t really like Inverness when it comes to gigs. Where I expected reasonably sized crowd, with varying lighting and the good ol’ photo pit, I found a room barely bigger than most people’s living rooms filled with beanbags and other soft furnishing in the loft space of a local shop… Oh, and by the way, did I say it was acoustic?

That threw me big-time, and I’m blaming that for the lack of decent shots that night. The lighting was simple to say the least which although made it easy to work with, it didn’t lend itself to good gig photography conditions, and with the small space it was very difficult to move, so I landed up holding my ground nearer the back so I could get access to my gear and not get in everyones way. Unfortunate, because I really enjoyed myself that night — whilst funk rock played acoustic doesn’t sound like a good idea on paper, The Xylophone Race pulled it off, and well.

This was the first ever gig at the Loft (Above the Greenhouse), but it certainly won’t be the last.

Update — Due to the quite frankly ridiculous amount of spam I seem to be receiving for this particular post, I’m closing the comments. Apologies for any inconvenience!

Stolen Order Photoshoot in Invergordon

Well, there’s a story to go with this shot, so I’ll tell it. Something else for the blog while I’ve got a bit of a gig drought…

I was asked to do a photoshoot a while ago for Stolen Order, a mate’s band, but it’s only fairly recently we found the time on both sides to do one. I was leaving my previous job, and had two days off before starting my new one (if you think I’m a workaholic, believe me I’m not — I just like money), and they also happened to be meeting to practice that evening. The plan was for everyone to meet for the practice (didn’t happen), then head straight to the guitarist’s house in the town of Milton for a bit of banter, Guitar Hero and boozing.

A little advice. In Milton, camouflage is required for safe passage. You’re best bet is a Kappa tracksuit. Yes, it’s like that.

The sight of my buddies in cowboy boots, bandannas, long (facial) hair and big sunglasses didn’t exactly endear us to the local populace. One of the boys (he’d have been in is mid-teens) offered to fight me there and then (I declined, citing the fact I couldn’t really be bothered) and then followed us right the way back to the house. Thankfully, not much else happened after that, other than us all staying up to 2am getting very drunk and playing Guitar Hero all night.

The next afternoon wasn’t too eventful to start with either. We went to the ferry crossing to Nigg, got a few shots there, none of which were particularly good really. I was getting very bored, very quickly and I was fast running out of ideas for them, which was when the bassist had a ‘good’ idea and asked us to follow him in the car. Now, he was the one that took his time doing everything, and was the reason we were running late, and I believe the reason the practice got cancelled (he didn’t show) so I wasn’t exactly looking forward to this, and the little tour of Invergordon we were treated to didn’t help my expectations. But when we pulled up to this warehouse… oh yes, all was most certainly forgiven.

It was ideal. The lighting looked really good through all the broken windows, and it fit the band’s mood perfectly. I was much more enthusiastic, and so were the band — this was where the best pics were going to be taken. In fact, I think the one above this was about the best of the lot, and it wasn’t long after that the police showed up.

Shit.

“Just doing a photoshoot for a local band, mate” was the reply to a slightly bemused police constable. He and the WPC with him were called out by a neighbour who’d seen us break in to this warehouse through a gap in the fence, perhaps thinking we were going to be vandalising it more than it already was, or starting a crystal meth production facility, or running some kind of illegal sweat shop making fake Kappa trackies for the locals or something. It’d clearly been abandoned for a long time but I’d no doubt the distillery still owned the buildings. When we were asked if we had permission I was sure we were going to be ejected immediately.

But, we weren’t. The male officer just told us to keep the noise down, leaving us with the words “I wasn’t expecting this when I got the call out”. After all the stuff in the press with photographer’s getting stopped by police for simply taking photographs in public, which by-the-way is a perfectly legal activity, I was sure we’d have been charged with trespass or something — all this time I was thinking about the new job I was starting just the next day, and how I would have so totally screwed it all up if I’d been arrested.

I didn’t get their names. I wish I did now, because they were the best officers I’ve ever met.