Craftypics's Blog

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.

Yet another show I’ve been looking forward to seeing – Gomez ( I had yet to see them live ) but love their albums. The Show at The Gov was sold out which was a good start. No crowd barrier but the Gomez Crowd was fairly friendly in letting the 4 photographers move around the front of stage during the first 3 songs. The lighting though wasnt the best with lots of horrible Red LED lights illuminating the band. It was a very solid show although at times the band members looked a bit weary which isnt overly surpising given their heavy tour schedule with Adelaide right near the end.

Photos from the gig are up here

You know the Thebby is struggling for ticket sales when you enter the concert hall and the black curtain is across the top set of seating. Despite the pretty small crowd there were 2 bands performing that gave as much energy and commitment to the shows as I have ever seen. First up starting almost right on 8pm was the Grates with lead singer Patience Hodgson doing her rather “excitable/maniac” dancing around the stage that makes a Grates show a great show. Lots of crowd favourites although with the early start the crowd didn’t really start filling in until the set was almost over. I was glad I caught the whole show. Patience even headed down into the crowd for some crowd surfing which is something she appears to be doing quite often on her current tour.

Main act on the bill was The Hives from Sweden. Entering the stage all dressed up in B&Ws with Tophats they soon had the crowd moving playing a selection of songs from the older albums as well as some new stuff that was well received. Overall a night of pure energy from both bands. It was just a shame that a lot of people missed seeing this show. Hopefully The Hives will return to Adelaide sometime and maybe a bigger crowd will turn up

The Adelaide Roller Derby league came to its conclusion on Sunday 17th July with a Double header

First up was the battle for 3rd place between the Mile Die Club Vs Wild Hearses. With the Mile Die club having a winless season for 2011 there was everything to work for and after a see sawing game, the hard work finally paid off for them with their first win of the season to tke 3rd place.

The final game of the afternoon was between Road Train Rollers and the Salty Dolls to see which team would be overall 2011 Champion. I was unable to stay till the final whistle but the Saly Dolls were dominant from the start and took out the championship.

The Full Gallery of the images can be found HERE

The last few months have been very busy as I prepare to launch into Photograph/Video as a Full time Career.  Where do I start ?

I set myself a timeline of the end of June 2011 to get fully prepared so now that the date has just ticked over to July we start

I’ve spent a huge amount of time in the last few months learning what I can about the Adobe Collection of products, not just the ones I use every day such as Adobe Lightroom which I am fairly proficient in using.

The Craftypics logo is changing and I’m dropping the word Photography. You may be wondering why ? It’s not just photography. There is a larger volume of Video I am generating now and some of my self education time has been spent starting to learn Adobe After Effects and Adobe Premiere. These are both massive programs and the learning curve is  pretty steep, but I’m breaking it down into learning what I need to do to complete a particular project. There is a new video title that will be appearing on any new Video productions.

Expect more frequent updates to this Blog from here on and the official launch of another website with some specialty products.

Checking the BOM site on Saturday night it appeared the weather forecast had been updated from fine to a few showers. It was a last minute decision to take a raincoat and an umbrella although as it turned out it was merely a few spots of rain that fell on Sunday and they were quite refreshing.

Got to Botanic park fairly early and caught the Yabu band who but on a pretty solid performance. Next up was Calypso Rose on the main stage. Despite her being in her 70s and she reminded us of that a few times she was still pretty spritely and entertained the crowd. There were a few notes she struggled with during the performance but given her age it’s not that surprising and no one will hold that against her. I moved across to stage 3 to see Archie Roach. The three performers on stage were Archie, his son and his nephew and then there was the empty chair on stage signifying his recent loss. Archie himself was quite emotional  and really opened up to the crowd and there more than a few people in the audience who were wiping away tears.

Heading back towards stage one I heard the familiar sound from a few days before of Amadou and Mariam and caught the end of their workshop on the Moreton bay stage. On stage 1 next was Os Mutantes whose dress sense was very 1960s/1970s. They played an entertaining mix/style of easy to listen tunes.  The parade was up next with all the colour and movement that regular Womad audience come to expect from the participants and in particular the kids. Although seeing Whitireia Performing arts on Friday I decided to watch them again as they had finally got hold of all their costumes and props which had been delayed in transit on their other performance. They manage to really mix up some of the Maori singing and dancing morphing from quite an aggressive “angry” chant to soothing melodic rhythms.

Dereb the Ambassador was next up and I only caught the tail end of his show but it was enough for me to wish I’d seen more. There will always be clashes though and sometimes you just cant fit everything in. Joanna Newsom was next. It was pretty hard to get any decent photo of her due to the piano and Harp being at the rear of the stage and every photographer in the pit vying for the only spot you get a clearish shot. There is NO video of Joannas performance either as her management decreed that none shall be taken.

I’d heard a lot of good comments about Dub Marine, a Brisbane outfit so I left Joanna Newsom hot footed it across to the Zoo stage to catch the end of their set which was the last time they played at Womad. The crowd was  quite pumped and being on the zoo stage meant no decent photo access, so it was a case of holding the camera overhead and using Live view for a few photos. Onwards next to see Sidestepper who were another one of my highlights with 3 vocalists up front and a solid percussion behind them, sidestepper had the crowd moving from the start to the end of their set.

I wanted to see Luka Bloom as Sunday night was his only performance and it clashed with Afro Celt for whom also it was their only performance. I chose Afro Celt due to the higher likelyhood of some great photos and a Photography pit at stage 1 whilst nothing at all for Zoo stage. Afro Celt were next and after acknowledging the boost they got to their profile after their original Womad performance some 10 years ago fired up that formula to get the crowd dancing. Infectious rhythms, lots of percussion mixed with some synth kept the crowd moving until the end of their set. Before the night was over though I had to check out The Necks whom I had heard a lot about. Their performances are completely unrehearsed so anything can happen. After about 30 minutes though and a long day with another full day ahead I pulled the plug on seeing their full set and headed home to transfer the days images/ recharge the camera batteries and my own batteries. Just one more day left.

LINK to FULL Gallery for Sunday -> CLICK HERE

Womadelaide has to be one of the most enjoyable experiences musically which is what draws me back year after year. Listening and watching acts that you don’t know that much about and coming away thinking Wow.. why have I never heard of these guys.

Friday Night – After the traditional welcome from the aboriginal Community the first act up on Stage one was Rango who were very energetic and colourfully dressed. Next up on stage 2 was Hanggai- a group from China. Hanggai would have to be one of my Friday highlights. Angas and Julia Stone were next up on stage one and as expected a large crowd gathered with the ratio of females to males at the front of stage approximately 99:1

After a bit to eat I headed to stage 2 to see Nathalie Natiembe which was an entertaining show and had some great lighting that I positioned myself to take advantage of. I left partway through to take a quick look at Rhombus and just caught the end of their set. Back to stage 1 then to catch my final Act of the night Horace Andy  and Dub Asante.

LINK TO FULL GALLERY FOR FRIDAY ( Click here )

Click on the images above to go to the full gallery