Category Archives:  Live Music

Michael Paynter

Great to see the highly talented Michael Paynter back in the spotlight again, this time auditioning on Channel 9′s The Voice last week.

Although I was surprised to hear he had auditioned, I can understand his reasons for doing so given how his long-anticipated debut album never quite got released by Sony.

I first saw Michael performing as a support act for Kate Miller-Heidke at the Northcote Hotel back in 2006 and was impressed with his confident stage presence and powerful voice. So too were his vocally exuberant group of fans at the front of the stage, indicating that this was someone we’d likely see more of in the future.

Michael Paynter

Michael Paynter performing at the Northcote Social Club on April 19th, 2006. Photo by Ben Loveridge

Michael Paynter

Michael Paynter performing at the Northcote Social Club on April 19th, 2006. Photo by Ben Loveridge

If his upcoming performances on The Voice are anything like his cover of John Farnham’s Burn For You below, he will be a tough one to beat.

These are a couple of songs he released over the last few years.

Emma Heeney Video

I was asked to film a live video for a new tune by Emma Heeney, the brief being to keep it a relatively simple performance piece. Having brought a couple of DSLR’s with the intention of a multi-camera shoot, I ended up opting for a single Canon 5Diii coupled with the 24-70mm f2.8 II for the entire video. I felt the tone of the song lended itself more to a dreamy floating hand-held style rather than a static one. Also the thought of capturing twice the amount of footage didn’t appeal, given I had set myself the challenge of completing the entire video in the one session.

Three full performance takes were completed and a fourth specifically for cut-aways to be edited in later Lighting was all natural through a window facing the performers and the audio was captured via a Zoom H4n placed on a tripod in front of Emma. After deciding on the main master shot to be used, the cutaways were inserted during the editing process using Adobe Premiere CS6.

Thankfully each take was consistant enough so I could use small visual sections from different parts to overly without too many sync issues. All-in-all the whole clip was set-up, shot, edited and uploaded to YouTube in 5hrs.

Grinderman @ The Palace

Gun Street Girls – Bakehouse Studios

The Gun Street Girls, having recently finished off a new batch of recordings took some time out at Bakehouse studios for some photos.

Although predominantly a rehearsal studio, there is an amazing space upstairs complete with a Chinatown/Wild West bar that makes for a nice backdrop.

It was a conscious effect to not make the leader singer, Dave Larkin too prominent in every photo so I took a mixture of shots with each member in different positions to keep things as equal as possible.

A mixture of  ‘looking at/not looking at the camera’ posing was used, since it’s often hard to tell until later which method works best for the group.

The band were keen to check out what different clothing/hat combos worked best, this photo was taken as an off-the-cuff shot to show Dave his hat in the camera LCD screen. It ended up coming out as a nice natural portrait shot, something I’m always keen to capture.

Most of these shots were taken using the Canon 50mm 1.4 lens as I was able to get far back enough to include everyone in shot and the shallow depth of field helps the photos ‘pop’ out a bit more. Post production was done with Lightroom, using a number of the presets like ‘bleached bypass’ and ‘aged photo’ as a starting point, as they seemed to suit the surrounds.

Save Live Australia’s Music (S.L.A.M.) Rally

Thousands of live music supporters marched to the steps of Parliament House in Melbourne today protesting against liquor licensing laws that have impacted on the operation of many live music venues around the state. Here is my footage and stills captured on the day with the Canon 7D.

Fortunately, with a recent Live Music Accord being brokered behind the scenes just prior to the rally it looks like common sense will prevail. More information can be found on the SLAM website.