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Earth Station Saturday

Posted: October 23, 2011 in Adelaide Events, Uncategorized
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Only a Brief update today as I’m running late and need to head back for the final day so I’ll update this post tomorrow.

Got to the event on Saturday nice and early although I’ll have to say that one of the officials at the Belair Station bus pickup area wasn’t being overly helpful, advising the people waiting that he wouldn’t call for another bus until the next train came in  which was 25 mins away. This seemed ludicrous given there were already a handful of people there and more arriving by car and parking near the station all the time. Thankfully a Bus turned up soon after with the bus driver telling us he had been given a schedule but was ignoring it so that people could be picked up. I didn’t get the drivers name but BIG thumbs up to the City of Mitcham bus driver as he drove us to the earthstation entrance with what was almost a full bus ( only 3 seats left ).

Not enough time to do a full band writeup today but honourable mentions to  the Audreys and the Shanghai Chinese Orchestra but I have to say the absolute highlight of the festival so far was the performance by Zakir Hussain and the masters of percussion – absolutely breathtaking percussive rthymns. I’m going to take some extra cash today to pick up a CD. Another big plus to the last act of the night and really the only band I’ve seen that had everyone up on their feet and that was Mista Savona with their blend of Reggae and Ska. They started soon after 9pm on the Karka stage. I left at 10pm and they were cranking up the tempo.

Would have loved to stay but I was feeling pretty bushed after being there for 10 hours and needed to get home to go through the photos and replenish both the camera and my own batteries.

Photos of Saturday at Earthstation 2011

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Earth Station – Friday Night

Posted: October 22, 2011 in Uncategorized
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When an event is run for the first time you always expect a few things to crop up and sure enough they did, but before going into some suggestions for improvements, let me start by saying I enjoyed the first night of the event.

Having lived and grew up in Belair, the event was literally being held in “my backyard”. I had asked a few days earlier on the Earth station facebook page whether the shuttle bus was going to run internally to the park off Sheok Road and was advised that the shuttle bus was going to be only going through the main Upper Sturt rd entrance. Imagine my surprise when I turned up at the train station bus pickup area to find they were going through the Sheok road entrance. The buses running through were City of Mitcham Mini buses which had very small capacity ( about 20 people ) so it took over 45 mins to get on a bus despite being near the front of the ever growing line. We got to the event and headed straight to the Karka stage getting there just as the opening speeches were being made.

I caught the start of the first performance by Frank Yamma and David Bridie and then headed down to hear some of Stephen Pekars talk.  My Family decided to join the Bat workshop run by Simon who was surprised at the sheer number of people joining him, but said it was amazing that so many other people thought bats were cool.  I myself had a bit of a look around the site and then headed to the Keynote by Roy Neel. I was quite surprised to see only a handful of people at his keynote address. I think most people had left the Karka stage and either gone off to try and find bats or were getting some food. I think the organisers should have had Roy on a stage straight after one of the performances so that the crowd were already there.

A quick listen to the start of the talk by Mike Sandiford and then back to the Karka stage for Vika and Linda Bull, who put on a great performance which had many of the kids in attendance down the front dancing.

The main act of the evening and indeed the only act on the main stage was the Kronos Quartet accompanied by the Adelaide Chamber singers who were positioned down in front of the stage area. They would have been praying it wasnt going to rain because if it did they would have all been drenched. One can only assume that the organisers hadn’t checked the Freight Train Schedule as 5 mins into the performance the Adelaide – Melbourne Freight train came screeching around the hill to the North of the stage and drowned out much of the subtle music for the 3-4 minutes it took to pass. I got used to the humming/droning of the generators behind the stage area, but there were 2 people a few metres back to me that just talked throughout the performance despite a few glares from myself and other around us. These two were not kids, nor young adults, they were middle-aged and should have known better.  They even increased their talking volume when the music and singing on stage got louder. Really if you want to talk to each other at such a performance PLEASE move to the back or side of the stage area.

I thoroughly enjoyed the Kronos quartet and before you know it the night was over. I was a bit concerned about the bus trip back to the station as the line was quite long, but thankfully they had much bigger buses acting as shuttles on the return trip and we were back on the road again to the station after only a 10 minute wait.

There is room for improvement and hopefully the organisers will have a Debrief and take on board some suggestions from those attending to make the festival bigger and better next year. Two more hours and I’m back there again. Memory cards have been formatted and batteries charged up.  Check the gallery tommorow and there should be at least a selection of images from the Saturday session.

You can find the Full Gallery of images up HERE

Womadelaide Earth Station

Posted: October 20, 2011 in Uncategorized
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Only 1 more sleep to go until Womad Earth station kicks off. Unfortunately my request to get site access to get some timelapse of the stages being set up was ignored but never the less I’ll be there from tommorow capturing some still images of the event to share. I’ll try again next year with a request for site access for some timelapse footage.

Fridays music lineup is highlighted by the Kronos Quarter performing Sun Rings. Other live performances on Friday are by  Frank Yamma & David Bridie as well as Vika and Linda Bull. Should have the first photos up Saturday morning

I pulled my bike out of the shed and went for a Ride to the Earthstation site at lunchtime. Looking good and the location is nice and green with the recent rains. Some photos of the site taken today 20th October are up HERE

Something for Nothing ?

Posted: October 10, 2011 in Uncategorized
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I must say that there is a disturbing trend of people thinking they have the right to have photos completely free of charge. Like any event held in a public place, people can take photos.

There is this notion that if a Photographer requests some form of payment for taking a photo that they are ripping off the public. Where did this concept come from ?

I have been photographing the Adelaide Zombie walk for 4 years now and have put my photos in a public gallery every year for people to view. The photos have a small transparent watermark in the bottom corner and I’m more than happy for people to have a copy of the smaller resolution images with the watermark intact to use on their facebook page or to email it to friends. It’s good advertising that hopefully will get more people to see my images and consider me for their photography needs down the track that might actually be paid work

For people to get upset that I’ll charge them a very minimal fee for a High res unwatermarked image is quite absurd.

Lets take a step back and look at some of the facts.

  • The Equipment taken by a Semi proffessional or proffesional photographer would in most instances be in the order of anywhere from $3000 – $10,000 at such an event.
  • The photographer needs to insure the equipment which is another $500 per year.
  • Public liability insurance in case someone injures themselves walking into your camera gear – another $500 per year
  • There is website hosting and Domain name hosting fees ( $300+ per year ).
  • There are software costs which are very substantial if you have taken a legal approach to software and this software needs to be upgraded regularly. My Current collection of Licensed software is in the order of $3500
  • Then of course there is the time spent – This figure is HUGE in hours. What value do you put on your time ?
  • Travel and Parking costs
  • ISP costs
  • Hard disk storage ( redundancy )

Time is the biggest factor that people dont think about when they question a charge for a service. To get decent photographs the photographer needs to have lots of experience/practice. The time taken to go through photos from an event, sort and post process ( make them look decent ) is substantial.

No one is forcing anyone to buy an image. You can view the images as much as you want online and the cost to you is NOTHING.  There are plenty of other photos on the Internet that people took which you can download for Free. If there is one of mine that you like and you want it to be High Res, high quality and unwatermarked then for a little more than the cost of a few beers you can have the image for your personal use.

For the record – in the past 4 years my sales of photos from the Zombie walks isnt even enough to buy a bottle of water….. That’s Sales NOT even Profit. I attend the Zombie walk as it’s a great event with lots of Photo opportunities. I spend a considerable amount of my time processing the images and sharing the photos. I don’t go there with any intention nor expectation of any sort of photo sale.

Taking photos at events like the AZW is a major loss making exercise for those taking photos – so STOP complaining.

Adelaide Zombie Walk 2011

Posted: October 10, 2011 in Uncategorized
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The Streets of Adelaide graon to the sound of Zombies yet again with the Annual Adelaide Zombie walk heading from Rymill Park to Light square. Lot’s of great costumes and makeup as usual.

 

Full Gallery of images is up here

 

Parklife 2011 – Adelaide

Posted: October 4, 2011 in Uncategorized
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I’m back from my first “Parklife” experience. Let me say first up that the parklife festival is one that would normally pass me by as I’m not into “Doof Doof ” music and a fair bit of parklife is just that, but when asked by Faster Louder if I wanted to shoot parklife I jumped at the opportunity as I do love experiencing new music even though it might never grace my CD collection.

I got down there reasonably early soon after the start at 12 noon, whilst the crowds were small and made my way down to the Sahara Stage to catch some of Messrs – plenty of energy from them and some great tunes ( Keep an eye on this band ).  I wanted to familiarise myself with the layout of the stages/ access etc so started a walk around and ended up at the Cave stage to catch a bit of the Killgirls ( yet another suprise packet ).

It was soon time to hit the Atoll stage for the first band I was planning on catching – Kimbra.entering with the stage with a warming smile and a colourfull dress, Kimbra warmed up the crowd with her catchy tunes. Great expressions to photograph also. A bit more of a walk around to catch some of DJ Bliss and some other acts. There was ALWAYS lots of things happening on many stages. Sometimes too many though with sound washing over the next stage. Found my way back to the Atoll stage for Little dragon, who also played some catchy songs with Yukimi donning feathers in her headgear and singing and playing some weird percussion pads. A bit of a break then before Death from Above ( DFA ) 1979 hit the stage. I had read a bit about this band and they sounded interesting. The crowd that was here to watch them was pretty hyped and when they came on the Drumming and guitar feedback had the crowd pumped. Some good photo ops although the drummer had the microphone hardware smack bang in the way of any photos from the pit. Next stop was the Sahara stage for The Naked and Famous. I’ve heard some of their stuff on JJJ so had some familiarity.

Santigold – Appearing on stage with 2 backup dancers who feather Santigold entrance on stage with flowers ( roses ) – certainly one of the highlights of the festival in terms of the whole theatrical experience. The performance had an “Egyptian” theme.

Gossip – Can she sing – You betcha. With one hell of a powerful voice Gossip pumped out some very catchy tunes with such gusto. Probably the Vocal highlight for me of Parklife

Sebastien Tellier – To be honest I’d read other reviews that indicated this was a must see, and was surprised when there was almost no crowd in front of the stage. Musically I found the first few songs rather bland although there was some awesome sunlight blasting in through the side where the keyboard player was and combined with the smoke machines made for some contrasty images.

The Streets – Lots of crowd banter from Mike including a request for a hotdog from the crowd which turned up about 5 mins later. I cant imagine anythign worse than a Festival hotdog but Mike had a bite then asked for it to be kept until later. Solid musically although from a potography viewpoitn having him stand for the most art of the first 3 songs on a speaker stack outside of the lighting area meant not a lot of lit shots and lots of sillhouettes.

Lykke Li – Didn’t know much about her, but a bit of internet research and watching some youtube clips meant she was on my agenda to photograph at the 8:45 timeslot when there was so much in the way of clashes ( 4 out of 5 stages clashing ). A Very Moody black and white smoke filled set from Lykke Li. I was pleasantly surprised by the performance and this is one act I might look at purchasing a CD of.

Simian Mobile disco – Ive heard a lot about these guys so I did a detour prior to heading home for a sleep to catch them on the Cave stage. interesting setup with a bank of rack mounted Synth/Effects that the two performers twirl/plug/slide knobs and dials to get the sounds. The crowd seemed to just be taking the sounds in, rather than energetically dancing around as they were earlier when Nero was playing

All the photos can be found HERE

Womad Earth Station

Posted: September 6, 2011 in Uncategorized
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The Lineup and Schedule for Womad Earth Station in Adelaide has been announced. The Event is aimed around sustainability and envirnmental issues and will be held at Long Gully at Belair National Park

Looking forward to seeing both the bands and the speakers that will be attending. This is the first year it has been run so it will be interesting to see how the format pans out. There’s a great lineup of artists with many of them familiar to the regular Womad crowd as well as some big names that as far as I know havent performed at a Womad event in Adelaide

 

The proposed schedule looks pretty good with plenty of stuff to do on all three days and tickets are available for single days ot the whole weekend. There is also limited camping spots available but fortunately for me I live very close by and could even walk there if I was fitter. Hoping to bring you all Photos from the event if the media accreditation gets approved.

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