Musician

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One Frame 006: Accidental Vintage

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The vintage-looking portrait you see above of jazz trumpeter Tom MacNiven was the result of a happy accident. Back in 2016, I was shooting with two black X-T1 cameras that looked identical. I had been asked to shoot a set of promotional pictures of Tom for an upcoming set of concerts. After setting up my background, lights, and modifiers, I asked Tom to stand in position so I could set the power of my lights. I grabbed an X-T1 from my bag and attached the 56mm f1.2 lens, raised it to my eye and took a test shot. The picture was overexposed, but I noticed that the colours were way oversaturated and looked strange. Then I realised I had picked up the camera that I had used the day before with Fujifilm’s miniature effect engaged. I had forgotten to follow my own advice and reset the camera so it was ready to shoot straight out of the bag. I quickly switched out of miniature mode and carried on with the shoot.

It wasn’t until I imported the pictures into Lightroom that night that I realised there was potential in this picture. It was way overexposed, but to my amazement, I was able to pull the exposure down and retain detail in the highlights. I played around with the colours, but the miniature effect jacks the colours up to give that toy look. So I converted it to black and white using my homemade LR preset with the catchy title of ‘ Contrasty B&W Split Tone +V’ (my presets tend to do what they say in the title). The +V just means a vignette is included. I then made a few other tweaks to clarity and sharpness and the results are what you see above. I used Nik Silver Efex Pro2 to add the frame.

SHOT WITH FUJIFILM X-T1 AND 56/1.2

Yuri Goloubev: Two Chevrons Apart

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Back in May last year, I was shooting pictures for my labour of love jazz book that I have been working on for four years now. It’s a slow process and I feel lucky when I get to shoot a single great jazz musician for the book. But on the 12th of May 2019, I struck gold with three great musicians. The Tim Garland Trio featured the bandleader on tenor and soprano sax, Jason Rebello on piano and Yuri Goloubev on bass.

I arrived early and set up my background and lights for the portraits. One camera was ready with a trigger on the hot shoe and a second camera was set for the wide-angle documentary shots that were needed. The band arrived and one by one I shot the pictures needed. Yuri told me about a new record he was working on and that he needed some pictures for the CD. We sorted out the details and I told Yuri I would send him some pictures.

I stayed to shoot the gig and it was such a fantastic performance by all three musicians. The venue was The Merchants House in Glasgow and it was a spectacular setting for the tight acoustic trio. A few days later I send Yuri the pictures and then forgot about it. Until a couple of months ago when Yuri got in touch to tell me the CD would be coming out on the 17th of April 2020, but he wanted to send me a pre-release copy. Sure enough Jiffy bag showed-up in the post a few days later.

The CD will be released and sold by Basho Records and is available by clicking the link at the bottom of this page. Two Chevrons Apart was recorded at Artesuono Studios, Cavalicco, Udine, Italy and engineered by Stefano Amerio, and what an amazing job they have done. Yuri is joined by Tim Garland on soprano and tenor saxophone, John Turville on piano and Asaf Sirkis on drums. Each musician adds precisely the right ingredient to this simmering pot of delicious jazz. Now and again the heat is turned up but then settles back down to simmer, keeping you hungry for more.

Do your ears a favour and pick up a copy of this great album. It will be available from Basho Records from April 17th 2020 by clicking the button below.

Tommy Smith OBE

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A massive congratulations to Tommy Smith, who has been awarded an OBE in the 2019 New Year honours list for services to jazz. An award that is so well deserved and possibly a little overdue IMO.

I have been doing all of Tommy’s photography since 2013, so I have seen first hand the hard work and dedication he puts into all things jazz, not to mention his passion for music education. Tommy is also professor of jazz at The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, as well as founder and director of The Scottish National Jazz Orchestra (which I also do photography for).

Read more about Tommy’s OBE and his reaction to the news HERE.

Bob Reynolds

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I recently had the pleasure of photographing saxophonist Bob Reynolds for a book I've been working on for some time now. The book is about jazz musicians and without giving too much away at this stage, it's a mixture of portraiture, documentary and some live performance stuff thrown in for good measure. At this point in time, the project is solely funded by me, which keeps the progress at a steady pace due to the cost of travel and accommodation.

Bob was currently on his European tour to support his latest CD called Quartet, so I reached out to him as he has been on my hit list for a while. Manchester was the preferred date, which suited me fine as it's only a three and a half hour train journey from where I live in Scotland. A journey that turned out to be really great on the TransPennine, with stunning scenery on a lovely sunny day. I love to travel by any means of transport, so the journey is part of the enjoyment.

After arriving at Manchester Piccadilly station, I headed for the hotel (via The Real Camera store to drool over a couple of tempting Leica's (M6 and M7). Credit card still intact and a little lump in my throat, I had lunch at the hotel before making my way to the oddly named venue Band On The Wall to meet Bob and the band. 

After the usual meet and greets, I set up my small traveling portrait rig, including two light stands three flashguns, a trigger, and two double-fold umbrellas. The weak part of this travel portrait rig is the background.  None of my Lastalite/Manfrotto collapsible backgrounds fold small enough and I can’t find a small headshot background to suit anywhere. So I'm using a small collapsible reflector that my friend John Summers gave me and I clamp a piece of black velvet material to it. It's a bit time consuming and doesn’t look very professional. But it gets the job done

With the portrait shots complete, we went downstairs and I made a few documentary-style pictures in the dressing room as Bob selected a batch of possible reeds for that night's gig. I moved around the room, making sure I had plenty of variety in my shots, changing angles, shooting from a low angle, getting something in the foreground, shooting into mirrors etc. I was shooting in RAW+JPEG but I shot a few B&W JPEG's to let Bob see a few pictures on the back of the camera to give him an idea of how they might look.

After a quick trip back to my hotel to drop off my lights and stands etc, I headed back to the Band On The Wall to shoot the gig. The venue was packed so I had limited space to move around and switched from primes to a couple of zooms for that reason (24-85mm and 75-210mm in 35mm terms, both f2.8). It wasn’t the brightest venue I've shot in, so 1/125th sec at f2.8 meant my ISO was around 3200 for the centre of the stage and anywhere between 6,400 and 12,800 for the sides.

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The gig was very special in my opinion. The energy between musician and audience was something that you don’t always get with jazz gigs, and it was great to see a younger generation of jazz fan so enthusiastic about the music. Bob also plays in the band Snarky Puppy and obviously has a following that includes quite a few Snarky fans as well as his own fan base, which is no doubt expanded with the popularity of Bob's highly addictive vlog on YouTube. 

Pianist Oli Rockberger dept for Ruslan Sirota on the first few gigs of the tour as Ruslan was busy being the best man at his friends' wedding, but  Oli played as though he had been a part of the quartet for years (he and Bob went to Berkeley at the same time). Most of the tracks on Quartet are pretty laid back, so it was great to see Chaun Horton being able to let rip on the drums on some really funky numbers, which were made all the funkier with Janek Gwizdala on the bass. Janek also has a great vlog on YouTube, which is based on the bass (see what I did there), but like Bob’s vlog, is enjoyable to both musicians and non-musicians. Janek is a joy to watch on stage. His bass playing is extraordinary and his use of effects pedals is a lot of fun, especially when a looper pedal is involved.

But the last word has to be on Bob. A fine musician/composer with an equal gift of a warm fat tone on the tenor sax with a great technical ability. One minute you’re listening to a beautiful ballad on the bottom end of his Selmer Mk VI and the next you’re being bombarded with amazing altissimo dexterity that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up. 
Bob is exactly what you see on his vlog, a really nice guy with a lot of time and respect for others. This shoot was a real pleasure.