First concert review for the Press & Journal

I did my first concert review for the Press & Journal on Saturday night, published today in the Inverness edition. It was a review of the Calum Stewart, Lauren MacColl and Andy May concert at the Old Brewery in Cromarty. Naturally I did the photographs too and here's how it all came together in the paper:

Click here to read the review online. And a spooky bit of trivia: While queueing to buy the paper, I looked around and guess who was behind me… Calum!

As well as the (very difficult) live photos I did some set-up ones too. For the group shot I had the location set and the lights in place an hour before the musicians even arrived, but I was never 100% convinced that the idea was going to work. A few minutes before we were going to do the picture, I asked three girls to help me test the idea and it looked awful, really bland and formulaic, so I pulled the whole lot down and quickly re-set a couple of yards along the corridor where I could shoot straight down from a high balcony. This was the result:

After the concert I also did some individual portraits of Calum, as he was the star of the show. Here are a couple of favourites:

Both of those portraits were done backstage in a cluttered room with pictures on the walls, using this simple technique to produce the professional studio look.

Update: Just in case anyone's interested, here's what the first idea for the group shot would have looked like. Doesn't really grab your attention, does it?