This was my sixth year taking photos at the Meredith Music Festival and once again a multitude of eclectic acts graced the stage over the weekend. This is a shot of Explosions in the Sky guitarist Munaf Rayani taken on 9th December 2011. More official photos up at 2011.mmf.com.au and aunty meredith’s flickr page.

These are the three custom settings I pre-programme when shooting where the available light can range from full sunshine to dark in a matter of minutes. I’ll often adjust these slightly depending on the conditions but find these a good place to start.

• Bright Sunshine – f8, 1/250th, ISO 100
• Shade – f5.6, 1/120th, ISO 400
• Dark – f2.8, 1/100th, ISO 1250

Most of the time I use two cameras, one with a 70-200mm zoom lens and the other with a 16-35mm and switch between the two depending on the type of shot that presents. For a shallow depth of field effect I’ll use a 50mm f1.4 or (as I was fortunate to borrow for the Dirty Three set) a 85mm f1.2 lens with its crazy halo effect when shooting into the light.

Most of the shots get some sort of curves/saturation/dodging/weaving treatment in Adobe Lightroom to help make them stand out or focus attention on certain aspects of the composition. Turning a shot black and white while adding extra contrast helps if the original wasn’t colourful or dramatic enough.

I was able to get few backstage band shots during the weekend including one of Custard who turned out to be more than happy to be photographed, especially since it was only their second gig in a decade.

It’s always interesting seeing different interpretations of the festival from other photographers perspectives and worth checking out Kristy Millikin’s festival photos and also the review from Mess and Noise along with photos by Leah Robertson.

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.

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.