Archive for November, 2008

I did my second arts review for the Press & Journal at the weekend, again at the Old Brewery in Cromarty. This time it was the Kevin MacKenzie jazz quartet.

There are a couple of things to mention about this review…

Firstly, note that the picture is of the bass player and the saxophonist, not of Kevin MacKenzie himself. This illustrates (again) why it's important to always provide a good range of pictures. Naturally I started by doing pictures of the whole quartet, and some of just Kevin. But as the evening went on I realised that I'd be mentioning the individual musicians a lot in the review, so I made sure I got some tighter shots of each of them in case the picture editor wanted to use them as insets.

Secondly, the review is a great example of how journalism is a team effort.

I've written for quite a few magazines and web sites over the years and I'm fairly proud to say that most of what I write makes it in to print with zero changes. But there have been the odd bits here and there that a kindly editor has tidied up, and it's nice to know that someone is reading my words with a fresh pair of eyes and making improvements when necessary.

But this review was a mess. I wrote it when I got home at about 3am on Sunday morning and sent it in to the paper before I went to bed. On Sunday night I re-read it and I was shocked by how loose and repetitive it was. But the version that appeared in print was super-tight and said everything I wanted to say much more efficiently. It's still my review, written in my style, but by cutting out all the waffle the editor made it a hundred times better.

Finally, I must give myself a slap on the back for this effort. I spotted that one of the lights was catching on the head of Kevin's guitar, and after many attempts I caught this golden glow. Not a great picture in the end, but worth trying for, I think.