Bury Tomorrow, originally uploaded by Ben Grubb.

Again, if I’d been to see The Hip recently, that would have a been a great pun. I haven’t though, sadly, so we’ll just have to make do for now.

Hello. It’s been a while since I posted anything on here. My life seems to be one perpetual game of catch up at the moment. I’ve been incredibly busy with various things, but that is the way I like it so it’s all good. So, one of things I’ve been doing a lot more in 2010 (which is nearly HALF WAY THROUGH, scarily) is concert photography. Matt at Call Upon the Author and Katy from Creative Boom have been fixing me up with a variety of shows across London which has been hugely enjoyable. One of my high points for the year was definitely finding myself in the photo pit at one of my favourite venues, Brixton Academy. That’s a small, but important career goal I can tick off.

So anyway, I’ve been busy writing and shooting and having a throughly good time. I have also discovered the importance of earplugs. Below are a selection of shots from the shows I’ve been to recently (with corresponding reviews where possible). Enjoy!

A Skylit Drive: Review

Alesana

Bury Tomorrow

Idlewild (again): Review

Sparrow and the Workshop (again)

I’ve also been to see Wintersleep again (shocking, I know). I went to a couple of shows on their recent tour, but here’s just one set of photos from their show at The Lexington in London.


Wintersleep

I have also updated my concert photography gallery with a selection of my favourite shots. So yeah, all in all, pretty busy. I hope you’ve enjoyed this little catch up on the last month or so in (part of) my photographic life. There’s more stuff to come soon, but for now, I’m off to enjoy a lazy bank holiday Sunday evening with my girlfriend. See ya soon!

Hello all. Sorry it’s been a while. A lot’s been going on with me recently which is good! Also, I was computer-less for a while. My PC picked up a rather nasty virus which it is still recovering from, and had to undergo some particularly nerve wracking open hard drive surgery! Luckily, we found a suitable 1TB donor and the operation seemed to be a success. There’s still some way to go until full recovery though. Huge thanks to master surgeon Dr. Ben Sales for all the help. I definitely wouldn’t have been able to do it without him and would be a jibbering wreck on the floor by now. More than normal I mean, obviously.

Also, my MacBook had to go in to the Apple Store to have it’s fan and top case replaced (which they did for free, bless ‘em) and is now back to it’s full glory and looks all cleaned up and handsome again. Wonderful. It’s good to be able to actually do work and things again.

Anyway, techno geekery aside, I have some exciting news: I have started to write and photography shows for my friend Matt’s music review site Call Upon The Author. The very same site which I designed a banner for last year. I’m working towards getting together a decent portfolio of concert shots, and Matt’s the man with the contacts, so I thought we could help each other out. So far, so good. I went to my first show as a “reviewer” last week, and to start things off, I was lucky enough to see Paul Murphy’s (of Wintersleep fame) side project Postdata at The Borderline. He (or rather they, as he was joined by fellow Wintersleep band mate Tim D’eon on keyboards) are doing a short European tour opening for David Bazan (of Pedro The Lion). Both were rather enjoyable, and I certainly enjoyed Postdata! The review is done and up on Call Upon The Author now is you want to have a look. There’s also a small selection of photos on Flickr. Definitely check out the album as well – it’s marvelous. I have a few more shows lined up over the next few months which I’m looking forward to, and I hope you’ll check out my post gig ramblings. I’ve got a few other exciting things in the pipeline as well which I’ll no doubt talk about on here in due course. As the weather starts to brighten, so to does my year! Good times.

Tim, Mike & Paul, originally uploaded by Ben Grubb.

Last week I went along to a couple of Wintersleep shows – one of my favourite past times! The first was in the biggest venue I’ve seen them in to date: Hammersmith Apollo. They have been opening for Editors on their UK tour along with a band called Airship. It was a really great, albeit short show and they played a new track called ‘Black Camera’ from their forth coming album. It sounds great. I can’t wait to hear the rest of it! I didn’t take my camera to that show as I didn’t have a photo pass and I couldn’t really be bothered with the hassle for trying to get my gear past security for a seven song set. Besides, I had a golden opportunity to shoot them again on the Saturday night at The Tabernacle in Notting Hill.

Snoo and I were heading along to the show on the Saturday night in West London, and as a nice surprise, a few days before our friend Gill got in touch and asked if she could join us as she was over in London from France with her daughter. Of course! The more the merrier! We’d never been to The Tabernacle before, and we were very pleasantly surprised. There was a really nice bar/restaurant thing downstairs where we had some food before heading up to the stage.

The main room was really well lit and the stage was pretty low which was great for getting different angles during the show. The good, bright lighting was really nice as it meant that I could break away from just using my prime lens and get some nice wide angle shots for a change. Airship were also acting as the support band for this show as well, so I shot a few photos of them before Wintersleep took the stage.

Wintersleep put on a great show as usual, and I was totally in my element shooting hundreds of photos! I had a pretty intense editing session over the next couple of days, and even after being pretty ruthless I still ended up with 100+ photos being uploaded to Flickr. I was

very pleased. I managed to have a quick chat with Loel, Mike and Tim from the band and gave them some business cards etc. I can’t wait for them to come back over again, and I can see them again – maybe as their official photographer. Good times!

Also, last week my Dad and I went to the Canon Pro Photo Solutions exhibition in Islington. It was a really great show full of interesting exhibits and seminars. We were there for about six hours playing with new gear and chatting to people. We also attended some interesting talks, mainly about software and things. My favourite talk of the day was on Adobe Lightroom 2 by a guy called Dave Mallows. It was a fairly basic introduction to Lightroom (which is what I needed) but it really helped and taught me some really useful stuff. Because of that talk, I now have new look flash galleries on my website which I didn’t realise you could produce in Lightroom. They are live now, and you can see them in the Photography section of the site. Let me know what you think!

I think that’s all for now. Hopefully I’ll have more stuff to add soon. Oh, and it’s November now which means this new look version of the site has been running for a year already! Hurrah! Here’s to many more…

As promised, here’s some more new(ish) work. I don’t really know where this image came from really. I was just messing around with the photo and came up with the bulk of it, then drew and added the sketch, dropped on some text and there it was. Pretty simple, but I was quite happy with it. It certainly got me into the flow of producing work again, and that’s something that hopefully I’ll be able to keep on top of! I definitely feel really inspired at the moment, and there’s always plenty to do.

Along with the more personal work, I’ve been doing artwork for various recordings (mainly Wintersleep). A while back I mentioned that I saw them live again at the Bar & Kitchen in Hoxton Square. I taped the show, and I’ve finally finished editing it and creating the artwork to go with it – Here’s the fold out front cover:

I’ve gotthe backlog of other shows from December to work through now as well. It’ll be cool listening to those again and reliving that excellent tour! I’ll be sure tp pot up artwork and things as they come together.

As a little treat, here’s one from the tracks from the Hoxton Square show: Astronaut – Enjoy!

Last week was a really hectic one! In between the usual three or so sessions of climbing, I attended a couple of gigs. First up was Wintersleep at the Hoxton Square Bar & Kitchen in Shoreditch, a mere 20 minute stroll from work! It’s a cool little venue (I’d been there once before on a night out – very different out come!) with a terribly trendy bar attached to a club-come-gig venue with a nice high stage at one end. I got to the venue after work in plenty of time, grabbed a beer and chilled out whilst waiting for friends to arrive. As with most of that side of London, the place had a very Boho feel to it which was nice, although I felt like I should have been sporting a velvet jacket of some kind. Maybe next time.

I saw Paul and Loel at the bar, and went over to see them. They remembered me from last December which was nice, and we chatted for a while before they had to head off to do an interview. I also ran into Chris Bell, their really nice, friendly and helpful sound guy, who helped me suss out a decent sport to hang my mics for the show. On the way back I ran into Tim as well, who gave me a hug (he may been drinking – hark at me and all the name dropping! It doesn’t happen often!) and we had a quick catch up on how the tour was going.

Phil and Stacey arrived soon after, and we had a few drinks and a catch up. Snoo arrived soon after and we headed inside, and caught the very end of the support band (whose name escapes me – sorry!). I set up my mics by the board, and once the band came on switched into full-on-battle-photographer mode. The place was packed out! Definitely the biggest crowd I’ve seen at a Wintersleep show, and certainly a far cry from the 30 people in a warehouse in Cologne! Everyone seemed really up for it as well, and very appreciative of the band which is nice. I rattled off 200+ shots before my batteries died during the encore. The lighting was a bit hit-and-miss, but I managed to get some good shots. Tim and Jon were a but shadowed away on the edges of the stage, but I managed to cover them pretty well. Mike seemed to be getting the pick of the spot lights!

As usual, the guys played a great show! I don’t think I’ll ever tire of hearing ‘Miasmal Smoke…’ live. Also, the final song ‘Calibre’ was a new one to me and I thoroughly enjoyed the raw, raucous version they played! Paul ending the song using Jon’s mic as he managed to trash his own with his guitar! Great times!

I hope I can catch them again when they apparently return in May. Hopefully right at the start before I go away! Fingers crossed! Check out the full set here.

Tim, originally uploaded by Ben Grubb.

I’ve finally finished editing all my Wintersleep photos – The full collection can be seen here. I might add an additional gallery of the best ones here as well when I get a chance. We shall see. I hope you like them – comments and feedback are most welcome.

Happy 2009 everyone!

Loel, Paul & Jon, originally uploaded by Ben Grubb.

Well, first off – MERRY CHRISTMAS (Sorry it’s late) and HAPPY NEW YEAR! I hope you’ve all had a lovely festive period.

I’ve been making slow, but steady progress on all my Wintersleep photos – I don’t think I really have the slickest workflow on these, but I’m getting there and really enjoying reliving the memories of the fantastic shows. I can’t wait for them to (hopefully) return in February.

Soundcheck

Originally uploaded by Ben Grubb

Greetings from Hamburg! The tour has been going pretty well so far – I’ve spent a lot of time on trains, but it’s definitely been worth it. Yesterday was a “day off” (i.e. no show that night) but up until then its been gigs every night. Cologne (which was the last one I was at) was fantastic! They really mixed the setlist up from previous nights which was a nice surprise (see below).

Nerves Normal… made an appearance, and was a 15 minute minute marathon which sounded superb! I hope they keep that one in for either tonight or Berlin. Avalanche was a nice touch as was new song Baltic which is pretty catchy too, especially the bass.

Mark and I were in the venue at 5, and after a few moves around we were able to set up in this little attic at the back, above the soundboard. There was a hatch in the wall which gave a great view of the stage (see photo). We set up a stationary camera and the mics up there and sat and watched the guys soundcheck – pretty cool! That’s not something I’ve ever been able to do before. Unsurprisingly, I took a ton of photos which will no doubt make their way onto flickr pretty soon.

Cologne Setlist:

Drunk on Aluminum
Archeologists
Astronaught
Dead Letter & The Infinite Yes
Murderer
Weighty Ghost
Avalanche
Oblivion
Laser Beams
Baltic
Nerves Normal, Breath Normal
Miasmal Smoke & he Yellow Bellied Freaks

Tim, originally uploaded by Ben Grubb.

We’re off to Amsterdam today to see Wintersleep! It’s very exciting. After Amsterdam, I’m off into Germany for a few more shows, before one final one in London again on the 16th. Busy, busy!

Here’s a shot from their show in 229 in London the other night. There’s a few more on flickr.