My Top 5 Bands of 2015

December 31, 2015 by Julian Baird in Uncategorized

Every year I get the chance to photograph a stack load of bands. It's hard work but it can also be great way to discover new music. Most of the time I'll be familiar with the band, especially the headliners, but every now and again a band I haven't heard of blows me away.

This special blog post celebrates those bands. These are the artists that I remember the most from 2015 either through their music, stage presence or combination of both!

First up in my list is The Worried Men who were supporting Jefferson Starship at the Exeter Phoenix back in February. Lead singer Jamie really owned the stage and put on a great show! See my blog post of the gig here.

Jumping forward to June and I was back at the Exeter Phoenix to shoot The Sherpas. Cornish band Auction for the Promise Club were first on and their music really hit a note with me (excuse the pun!). You can also see my blog post of the gig here.

Covering festivals is a lot of work but when I shot Moriaty at Glas-Denbury in July I was blown away by the shear energy of the band. Talk about putting on a show! You can see lots more images from this festival by clicking here.

About a week later I was at another festival, Chagstock. You can see all my images from Chagstock here, but the standout act for me was Gaz Brookfield. I loved the lyrics of his songs and as soon as I got home picked up his live album.

Finally, and more recently, I saw Beardyman perform at the Exeter Phoenix in November. To say that Beardyman is a talent would be an understatement. His ability to mix up comedy with all sorts of music genres was just a pleasure to experience. You can see my blog post of the gig here.

If 2015 was anything to go by, 2016 should be a bumper year of discovering new music!

Finally, be sure to check out My Top 10 Images of 2015 blog post.

The Unplugged Blog is One Year Old!

September 22, 2015 by Julian Baird in Uncategorized

A year ago today I started The Unplugged Blog as a quick way to talk about and share the images I had recently captured. My first blog post shared some images from the Lewis Watson gig at the Exeter Phoenix - you can read it here.

One year and 24 blog posts later I've shared images from The South, The Boomtown Rats, Europe, Grandmaster Flash and UB40! It's been a blast.

For those who read my blog on a regular basis you'll know that I like to share my images as soon as I can. And while I will post images direct and live from a gig on my Twitter feed, you can't beat the quality of a fully processed image from the computer. So when I get back from a gig the first thing I do is catalog and select my best images. I will then normally select one or two of my best images from the shoot to share on my blog. It's important to share some images while the gig is still fresh in everyone's mind!

So to celebrate The Unplugged Blog's first birthday I've collated a selection of some of my favorite images. Not only are there images from previous blog posts but I've included some images from gigs before I'd even started the blog. So have a good look through and you might see some images previously unshared!

I hope you enjoyed this selection of images, I certainly enjoyed taking them. Remember to keep checking my Twitter feed and The Unplugged Blog for all the latest images!

See you next time!

The Sherpas, Instant Karma and AFTPC

June 15, 2015 by Julian Baird in Uncategorized

Epic. It's the one word I would use to describe the quality night of music at the Exeter Phoenix last Saturday night. With local band The Sherpas headlining it was already guaranteed to be a great night, but as I've seen before never under estimate the power of the support band to turn it into an epic night.

My photographic duties started out early as my friends over at MusicMuso asked me to help them cover a pre-gig interview with The Sherpas. It was good chance to meet the band and it was also a rare opportunity to shoot outdoors. It's sure to be an excellent interview so keep an eye out for it on the MusicMuso website.

Returning inside I prepared for the first band of the night, Auction for the Promise Club. Now, when I go to these gigs my primary focus is to shoot high quality images. However, sometimes you can't help but have a great time. Not only were AFTPC great to shoot but I also really liked their music. So after shooting the first three songs I got to hang back at the side of the stage and enjoy some quality music from the Cornish artists. Here is what they looked like on stage:

Next up were another local band Instant Karma. These very talented and energetic guys really put on show. Plenty for me to shoot and and a great show to enjoy from the sidelines. Here they are in action:

Last up were The Sherpas who put on a truly entertaining show. Again my shutter finger was given a good work out while my foot was furiously tapping to the quality sounds. Plenty of action from these guys:

Overall it was a great night for my photography as I got the chance to shoot three highly energetic bands with bags of stage presence. I saw Steve from MusicMuso writing frantically throughout the night so I'm sure there is going be a quality review up his website really soon. It really was an epic night of music!

I hope you enjoyed the images on this blog post but did you see the images I posted on Twitter live from the gig? No? Well then you better head over to my Twitter feed here and follow me for all the latest pictures posted live from the gig . I'm covering Brother Strut next month so get yourself a ticket and follow me on Twitter!

On a technical note...

My regular readers will know that I've been working with Lightroom CC Mobile to see if it offers any improvements to my workflow over Snapseed. I use Snapseed to process the JPG images I transfer over from my Nikon D750. I can then post these straight to my Twitter feed during the gig. After a bit of testing I've decided to stick with Snapseed. The primary reason is, and I find this a little strange, is that Lightroom CC Mobile doesn't provide any sharpening adjustments! Any image out of any camera always benefits from a little sharpening so it seems a little odd that is missing. Hopefully this will appear as a new feature soon along with RAW processing.

I still use Lightroom back at the editing desk to do all my heavy editing, but for now Snapseed is tool of choice for mobile editing.

That's it from me for now but keep an eye out on The Unplugged Blog for more images hot from my editing desk!