Been doing gig photography recently, and thoroughly enjoying it, even if the lighting can be an absolute nightmare for the D80.

Master Fiddler

The upshot is that I’m meeting people, socialising, and honing my photography skills.  Even better, I know precisely where I’ll be every Thursday night!

Datavision++.

Sailing North

We managed to raise the charter company on Friday morning (using the cellular phone), and they confirmed that we could indeed use the ‘emerg parallel’ switch at any point.  At that point, we cemented our decision to head back to Bequia, since the engines would at least start (though not properly) and run.  Mid-morning, after changing out the anchor (and this is when we found that the emergency anchor was the same size and weight as the primary anchor), we cast off from the mooring, and under the power of two props, did a 180 pretty much in place, and headed out between Petit Bateau and Petit Rameau, and up the channel in the lee of Petit Bateau.  We followed a reverse track out of the Cays, below the 1-Fathom Bank and then turned to head north towards Bequia.  Not more than an hour into the journey, we passed what had to be one of the biggest turtles I’ve ever seen – it was big enough that when I spotted it ahead of us, I called out to Mum to “g’down fast”, thinking it was something other than a turtle.

One of the items of food packed on the boat.

I’ve not been seasick very often in my life, twice to be precise.  The first was sailing with Grandpa in his 22 foot yacht; we were somewhere off Plymouth (I think, this was years ago), and I was trying to nap in the bow cabin in (to me at least) heavy seas.  The second was when we were coming out of the Bequia Channel in Desirade (a 40 foot monohull), having had conch pizza earlier in the day, and the sea was kicking up.  I was almost seasick a third time on this leg back up to Bequia, as I made the mistake of sitting on the lee side of the cat, watching the ocean behind us.  Since my brain had no visual cues as to what was coming, the slight corkscrew motion started to play hell on my inner ear.  Luckily, I indicated this, and took up the steering while munching on dry crackers; with the horizon and waves visible, my inner ear calmed down nicely.

West Cay in the afternoon light

The remaining hours passed smoothly, with constant course corrections the point us higher up Bequia – like the Channel, the sea between Bequia and the Cays travels east to west at a few knots, and not accounting for this will put you several miles west of Bequia by the time you reach the southernmost tip.  Mum and I tried for some shots of the coastline, and the Moon Hole houses – balancing tropical afternoon light against a dark blue ocean is not the easiest thing to do unfortunately (though it does make for some interesting shots).

Bequia

The bay could be summed up in two words – “pack out!”  We went looking for an anchor spot on the south-eastern side of the bay (where we had been at the beginning of the week), but couldn’t find a shallow enough spot that we were comfortable in – the first drop showed us tailing back far too close to other yachts.  On a whim, we headed across the mouth of the bay to the Hamilton side, hoping to find a good spot; alas this was not to be, and again I had a chance to demonstrate that I could make Tight Five spin inside her own length, avoiding various mooring buoys, other yachts and a passing dinghy.  Two independent props are about the only redeeming factor on that cat, though the large cabins come a close second.  So, thwarted by a lack of good anchorage on the Hamilton side, we motored back over to the Princess Margaret side, and hunted for somewhere to drop anchor.

The Bequia Express ferry

In the end, we anchored in about 15 feet of water, right up in the stern of another pair of yachts, and then tailed back on probably a good 150 feet of scope.  One bowline on a bight later, and we had the bridle in place, calming down the swing that the cat was prone to.  We proceeded to clean up a bit, and then sat back and watched life go by (we did a lot of this, it’s quite relaxing).  The monohull to port had two small dogs on board, complete with harnesses, as well as one of the niftier approaches to a dinghy that I’ve ever seen – the dinghy sat on a platform that winched down to float the dinghy off, and then winched back up out of the way.

Night fell, and we took readings on where we were with the directional compass, and sat down to dinner.  Post dinner, we started discussing how one would keep a pair of dogs on an ocean-going yacht, especially the aspect of how to ensure the dogs didn’t use the boat as a toilet.  Between bouts of laughter, we came up with attaching the dogs to skis, and using the harness to tow them, just hanging the dog over the side from the harness, lowering the dinghy platform, and just chucking the dog in the water and hauling it back out later.  I haven’t laughed so hard in ages – a good belly laugh.

Later that evening, I woke from a good sleep upon hearing a loud thump.  Thumps are not a good noise on a boat, as they tend to indicate that something has collided with you, or that you collided with something else.  Out on deck, and sure enough, we were a good 100 feet further out to sea than where we had been when we went to bed.  Where we had been, there was now another yacht – a monohull.  Thus began another night of anchor watch – music in my ears, avoiding the temptation to sit down, slowly walking around the deck, taking directional readings to make sure we weren’t tripping any more.  Dad came up around midnight, and off to bed I went.

A local boy chats up a visitor

Morning came around, and we decided that for our safety, and the safety of the cat, we would head up to St. Vincent that afternoon and spend the last night in Blue Lagoon.  Mum and I went ashore to explore a bit while Dad stayed on board in case of problems.  It’d been years since we’d been on Bequia, and we wanted to stop in at the Gingerbread to pick up some fresh pastries.  First though, a morning walk around the bay, looking around at what businesses had closed, which ones had opened, which ones had moved, and just observing life in general.  Then we stopped at the Gingerbread, had a hot drink and watched the dive boats prepare for a morning dive.

Two local youngsters were moving a cart loaded with dive tanks, and you could hear the smaller one (who was at the front) ‘busing the larger one to control the cart properly and not go so fast.  Quite hilarious.  We also noticed that the practice of local boys hovering around the dinghy docks, asking if you wanted your dinghy watched for a few dollars hadn’t died out – though the one who was trying at the dock in front of us wasn’t having much luck.

Once we’d munched on our pastries, and had our drinks, we caught a water taxi back out to the boat, and prepared to run up the north-west coast of Bequia and then across the channel.  We went out under engine, passing one of the inbound ferries, and turned into the wind and seas.  While a little rough, it certainly wasn’t bad, though there appeared to be two seas running.  As we got further out into the channel, the swells started to make their presence known, with a cross wind generating smaller chop that went cross-ways on the swells.

Mum and Dad decided to pull the fuel can out of the dinghy, and secure it to the deck instead.  As they were finishing this work, we found the middle of the channel, and the wave pattern changed – I was staring up the face of 20 foot waves, waves that were breaking every now and then, and without a harness (though, there were no hardpoints in cockpit area, so a harness wouldn’t have helped much).  Mum gave the order of ‘no one outside of the cockpit’, and we held on tight.

Morning light in Admiralty Bay

For a large part of those 30 minutes, I was constantly adjusting the engines, playing their revs with one hand, holding the wheel steady with my foot, and grasping the nearest solid object with my other hand.  At several points I had the starboard engine in neutral, and the port engine pushed all the way to the limits, just to keep us on the right line to cross the waves.  Quite exhilarating.

It didn’t take long to clear the roughest part of the channel, and soon we were holding station outside of Blue Lagoon, watching other yachts head out into the channel – some of them looked to be novices at sailing, so we wished them luck, because going down-swell would make for an unpleasant trip.  The dock crew came over shortly afterwards, and took us through the cut into the bay, and moored us.  And thus we passed the last sailing day of our vacation, tied to a mooring in Blue Lagoon, packing and cleaning the catamaran.  We handed the boat back over on Sunday morning, and filled in the charter company’s feedback form (and boy did we have some feedback – the three of us had a combined 140+ years of sailing experience, and some things just weren’t right).

Dad called the airline company, and got us slots on an earlier plane, so off to the airport we went with Phyllis.  One change-of-ticket fee later, and we were booked on the earlier plane.  Upstairs to the restaurant to kill time – some rotis, a side of chips and something to drink.  Very good roti, almost worth going to an airport for!  A bit more milling around, through passport control, a bit of waiting around in the lounge (which was no bigger than the inbound area), and then we were off on the Dash-8, 30 minutes to Barbados.

Oh, that pack of biscuits at the top?  “Caution, may cause laxative effects.” :)

I knew I was on call, but said that I’d like to show up, so Matt kindly guest-listed me in.  With my new phone on hand, I decided a few days ago that I could probably make it, so long as I checked my SMS every 15 minutes or so (and it turned out that 3G signal in Stratford is about non-existent).

Set off with plenty of time to spare, which turned out to be a good idea, as Google’s map was utterly wrong about where Cox’s Yard was.  While pondering the map, I happened to look up, and what do I see but “Cox’s Yard” staring back at me from a building cat-a-corner from where I was.  A quick circuit of the one-way system that is the entrance to Stratford, and I was parked across the river.  Meandered across the bridge, over to the Yard, and hung around waiting for the gig to start.

A really nice part about this performance was that the Yard had limited the seating to roughly 90 people, despite having a capacity of 220+ for the main stage. Small tables had been laid out, with a few chairs and a candle per table.  With the lights turned down, it made a very cosy, intimate atmosphere for listening to some fantastic music.  Katie opened the night, with a new song (America), and then continued with a few of her works that I’d heard before at the GW Festival (including Tongues, Bus Stop and Other Places).  My impression was that she’s still a bit nervous in front of a crowd (even a small one), but it didn’t detract from her performance at all.

After Katie finished, Matt introduced the Street Shepherd Band, who launched right into some wonderful music, including a piece that (paraphrased) ’should never be played outside of a gypsy wedding; seeing as I’ve been playing it for nearly 20 years, that probably explains a lot of things!’. One of the more unique pieces they played had hints of Miles Davis in it – certainly different, but in a good way.  For the second set, Ana Garcia provided the dance for the flamenco, and I was blown away by the energy she brought to the performance.  I am, unfortunately, no expert on flamenco, but I can certainly believe that she’s one of (if not the) top flamenco performers in England.

I now have a standing invitation from Matt to any of the events he’s organising, an invitation that I intend to take up as often as I can.  The photo work was fairly hard without a flash (I enquired ahead of time whether flash or flashless was preferred), and some of the lighting played havoc with the D80’s sensor, but all in all it was an excellent session.  Rolled home around 11 P.M., after pausing to get a long-exposure shot from the bridge out over the river; trying to capture the mist and the swans.

A Most Excellent evening.

In the week running up to last weekend, I did some frantic processing of the photos from the previous weekend, and shot them off to BonusPrint for a run of 8″x12″ glossys.  This turned out to be problem number one that week – the credit card payment system screwed up, so I had to call them and get things fixed.  What I didn’t realise (because it wasn’t made clear at the time) was that they had to put a hold on the print job indicating that the prints had to go to their office first… I also ran off some business cards using Vista Print, even though I knew they wouldn’t arrive in time for the weekend (they actually arrived yesterday).

With Friday in sight, and no sign on the proofs, I started panicking slightly.  My options were either to go into town the next morning, and hope that the local Jessops had printers on site, or to make a hurried purchase of a home-level photo printer capable of A4 prints.  In the end, I decided to gamble on Jessops, which worked out ok – they had printers on site, and were able to run off some 9″x6″ lustres for me in 30 minutes, though the black and white photos weren’t quite black and white (additive colour processing).  Tossed them in my bag, and headed for home to find all my gear.

Problem number two was not having the D80, lens, batteries, flash etc prepped the night before (actually, they should have been done by Wednesday).  Problem number three, which didn’t bite me until the evening, was that I didn’t have a checklist, and transferred my gear from one bag to another.  More on that in a bit.

I finally set off for the gig around 12:30 or 13:00, on my bike.  Problem 4 bit me as I was coming up to the bridge that crosses the River Leam on the way – I changed the front and rear cogs too close together, under the strain of an incline.  There was an almighty racket, a clunk, and then the pedals stopped moving; as I stopped pedalling, there was the unpleasant sound of a chain falling off of the cogs.  Yep, I dropped my chain.  Off the bike, prop it up, fiddle with the chain, crank the pedal and I was back in business, albeit with dirtier fingers than before.

Oh yes, networking.  Well, 5 of the groups that performed the previous weekend were at the GW Fest, so I took the proof prints with me, in ‘nice’ manila envelopes, and gave them to the bands.  I’ve also told them that they’re free to use any of the photos from the weekend, under a non-exclusive license, and to contact me if they want higher resolution versions.

Whether anything will come of it, I don’t know, however I’m going to start stepping up a gear.  The business cards are done, and I’ll be bringing a .com on-line to sport a portfolio of my photos.  I already have a gallery for my ‘mundane’ photos, but nowhere to showcase the ones I think are really good.  The design is already sketched out, I just need to decide on how to host the actual images – do it myself, or use a site like SmugMug or ZenFolio.

Back to the music, I mentioned problem number three earlier.  As the night started to draw in, I was shifting my ISO ever upwards.  Around ISO 1600 is where I like to stop, otherwise the noise does start to get a bit distracting.  So, time to run the flash in TTL mode, except I couldn’t find the batteries for the flash.  Yep, in the rush to transfer my gear from bag to bag, I forgot to transfer the batteries.  More haste, less speed.  I also forgot to grab my ear plugs, which are kind of essential when a band like the Satin Dolls are closing the gig – they’re loud.  Loud, but very good.

I stayed for the indoor jam session featuring Katie Dove-Dixon (pictured) and Kristy Gallacher, and finally rolled home (on a working bike) sometime around midnight.  11 hours of music, and most of it spent on my feet.  Good time though, just 400 photos to filter and process!

The afternoon rocked past, with 300 photos or so ending up on my SD cards – time just flew.  Excellent music, decent hamburgers and plenty of water.  Also ended up chatting to a staff writer from Americana UK who was there to cover the event, and swapped details (and cameras).  Having played with a Canon 30D, I still don’t like it much – it’s an excellent camera, but I just can’t hold it properly, the grip is that fraction too shallow.  The 17 – 35mm lens was nice and fast on the auto-focus though.

Musical highlights for me were Kel Elliott and her band (or was it the Kel Elliott Band?) – the brass section really completes the lineup; Libby Fielding, the dancer in Wes Finch and the Dirty Band – whirling dervish seemed to describe her at points, and I’m sure if you look in a dictionary, you’ll find her as the definition of energetic; and Jack Blackman, a young man (not yet 16) who had blues dripping from his fingers.

The evening wrapped up with a performance by the Street Shepherd Group – flamenco guitar, cajon drum, violin and a percussion instrument I can’t identify.  The pace was slower and quieter than what had preceded for most of the day, but it was a nice way to cool off after a day of shooting, and just relax to some good music.

Picked up a ticket for the GW Fest as well, with the intent of coming back for more good music, and the chance at some more photography.

My next decision was to head over to the Great Western pub in Warwick for the afternoon, as they were supposed to be hosting a decent number of bands from 13:30 or so.  Well, who tell me do dat without directions?  See, I knew that the pub was near the train station, and therefore, the train station must be near the train line, and I knew where that was.  The only problem with that plan is I didn’t know where the station was, only where the line crossed a main road between Warwick and Leamington.  So, a bit of going ‘Huh, where the heck is it then?’ ensued, with me finally finding someone to ask.  Had I continued up the road for another 100 yards or so, I would have found the pub – life is funny like that.

I had intended to stay at the pub for the afternoon, and then cycle back over to the main Festival grounds in the early evening to catch the rest of the main stage performances, especially Kel Elliott.  Somehow (probably laziness, and good music), I ended up staying at the pub for the entire afternoon and evening, listening to music by acts such as Davey Looth, Lydia and Celestina, Matt Hernandez (who happened to be the organiser, and a decent flamenco guitarist), Shanade, Kristy Gallacher and 1/2 of Jamsons Nook.  I also shot somewhere around 260 photos of the performers – if my usual numbers hold true, 20 – 30 of them will be acceptable, and one or two will be excellent.  150 have made the first cut, but I usually iterate over the photos two or three times, chucking out the obviously bad ones first, then refining the selection until I’m happy.

I rolled back out of the pub around 21:15, and went back to the main Festival ground to find dinner – which turned out to be curried mutton again.  What can I say, I like curried mutton.  I pondered going in to the main tent, but opted to go home instead to catch up on my sleep, and re-charge the batteries for the D80.

Turned out that the main show didn’t start until 8 P.M., so I kicked around a bit, taking a few photos of various stalls and people, growing hungrier by the minute – smart me forgot to stop at a hole in the wall to get some money, and I also forgot to eat dinner before I left.  Once the show started up though, I pretty much forgot that I was hungry, as I was rocking along to the music (if one can rock along to folk music).  Artists for the night were 4Square (a group consisting of 4 young musicians), The Maerlock (a jazz-folk mix), PJ Wright & Dave Pegg (the latter an ex-member of Jethro Tull) and Oysterband ended the show.

Oysterband.  I’ve attended rock concerts before, and I know how manic fans can be.  I never expected to see a folk group get welcomed by screams of adoration.  Except, Oysterband aren’t a folk band, they’re folkrock – a slightly subtle difference.  They’re damn good showmen, and pretty darn good as a band too – the music on their MySpace page is nice, but it doesn’t hold a candle to their live performance.

Managed to wiggle myself into the front of the stage, and shot around 200 photos, all flashless.  Also managed to have a brief conversation with one of the professionals shooting the concert, and got confirmation that all of them were shooting ISO 1600 or higher to avoid flash use.

Bent

Brakes