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!

There are two main challenges with shooting rock bands, knowing where to point the camera and selecting which images to publish. Both these problems are of course a good thing. I like to have the challenge of keeping up with the action on the stage and it's always a good thing to have a wide selection of images to choose from.

"So what bands caused your shutter button to flutter so much?", I hear you cry! Well, it was a triple whammy of Pillars, Creeper, and the mighty Bury Tomorrow. As usual the venue was the Exeter Phoenix and I was there with my good friend Steve from MusicMuso. He will be writing a full review of gig really soon so keep an eye out for it over on the MusicMuso website.

As it was such an action packed night last Thursday I'm doubling the number of images I'm normally post on my blog! To kick things off, here are Pillars....

Up next were the equally awesome Creeper.

By the time Bury Tomorrow hit the stage at theExeter Phoenix it was packed out. These guys delivered an awesome set to the eager fans.

So not only was it a great night of music, but a great night for taking photographs.

It's a change of music genre and venue for me next time. I'm off to the Plymouth Pavillions on the 17th of May to shoot UB40. So as always, keep on eye on my Twitter feed for images posted live from the gig.

On a technical note....

For those of you that follow my blog on a regular basis you will know that I currently shoot with a Nikon D750. I link this to my Nexus 6 tablet so that I can live tweet images of the gigs I'm shooting. I use Google's SnapSeed image editing app to process the JPEG files straight from the camera. This generally works very well and I was glad that they have just released version 2 of the app. This now provides me much better control over the shadows and highlights. These can be challenging areas with gig photography.

While Snapseed 2 is a great improvement I'm also going to start trialing Adobe Lightroom CC. I've always been a big Lightroom user and was always going to upgrade to the next version, but this time I'm going to jump on their subscription based licensing service. This will give me access to Lightroom Mobile on my tablet. It will be interesting to see how this could fit into my workflow. If I can edit the RAW files straight from the camera this should give me a similar level of image quality as I have here, but also when I'm tweeting live. I'll see how my tests get on but this could be an exciting addition to my image workflow.

However my images are processed next time, I look forward to sharing more of my shots right here on the Unplugged Blog!