Skip to main content

Guitars of Metal

Last night saw Lacuna Coil return to Sheffield for the 2nd time, marking the 3rd time I've seen them live. The first time was in 2006 at the Corporation, the same venue they played yesterday. The second time was in Manchester Academy earlier this year. Yesterday's set was, by far, the best I've ever seen them play.

On to photography, then, and I, obviously, took my camera with me. Aside from the obvious gig pictures capturing the moment, I had a theme in mind. What is more central in metal music than the guitar? Well, the drums, I suppose. But they're in everything. Vocal styles vary wildly, extra instruments play their part, but the humble electric guitar is right there in the centre of just about every metal song there is. Unless it's being played by Apocalyptica, but they can be the exception that proves the rule. Or something.

Anyway, I don't have to justify my choice of theme to you lot. It's guitars. So there. On to the pictures!


The main picture of the day today is of Mark, the vocalist and lead guitar of Troika, yet another great Sheffield band that I'm taking the time to find out more about. My favourite part of this picture is the reflection of his hand in the surface of the guitar, and the curve shape made up of his body, the guitar neck, and the angle lights taking the viewer's eyes up and over the side of the image.


Next up is Marco Biazzi's guitar from Lacuna Coil. It's a shame the top right corner is cut off a little, but I think the picture works well as it is. Plenty of interest left and centre, and the diagonal keeping it looking at least a little bit dynamic.


This here is Cristiano Migliore's guitar from the other side of the stage. I like this picture, but it's entirely too dark and there's not enough contrast. I tried to boost it a little but the high ISO means it's too noisy to be rescued, which is a shame.

I took a couple of others pictures of Troika and Slaves To Gravity, but the lighting conditions meant they didn't come out. Really need to take the dSLR to things like this. Manual focus and a massive sensor are a must for this type of lighting arrangement.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Shooting the Enterprise

I was recently asked if I could help out providing an image for a magazine article about stress management. For reasons as yet undiscovered the requested image would be of the USS Enterprise flying through a storm in space. Unfortunately I didn't have a lot of time (just a couple of hours), but I did have a very nice model of the Enterprise D I could use to build the image around. Thinking fast, I rigged up a rather slapdash rig consisting of a black reflector backdrop, an umbrella and stand from which dangled the model by a thread, and a couple of strobes. One light above, diffused, to provide the key light, and another, reflected and lower power, to fill some of the very dark shadows. It ended up all looking something like this: Using a fast shutter, f/16 and cunning flash positioning I managed to keep the background black and give the model suitably textured lighting so it didn't have that flat, uniform, shadowless appearance of, well, a model. The narrow aperture obv
Post a Comment
Read more

Fairy Lights

Street lights at night can be very pretty. For someone who lives close to the centre of a large city, skirting round the edge of the town centre can provide a host of beautiful views at night. One advantage to using a wide open lens when taking these pictures is the capture of bokeh, or creative blur. An extreme example is shown to your right; a mass of coloured circles that roughly represent the city they are part of. A more subtle example, of course, is in the picture of the day at the top of this post. The lights cluster around the top of the leaves like fireflies, obviously part of a cityscape but at the same time abstract. The extreme out of focus image is a blurred version of the picture on the left. A view over Sheffield from Pitsmoor, looking up Netherthorpe Road and up to the university. Even when the buildings are focussed (roughly; I'm still practicing) the lights take on the shape of the lens's aperture. I try to incorporate some foreground focus wh
4 comments
Read more

Another canal walk

The sun has started being a little more present lately, so some mornings are actually quite pleasant. On one such morning I decided to have a wander up the canal. The clouds made everything look a bit Toy Story, and the low sun gave a lovely light and contrast to everything else. Of course, it wasn't sunny everywhere. But even in the darker places, such as right underneath Leeds railway station, the sun had a go at peeking in.
Post a Comment
Read more