This is Retribution Gospel Choir, shot in Whelans back on the 13th of March. It was a pretty sparsely attended gig, which surprised me, as the band are a side-project of Alan Sparhawk of Low. I only decided to go in on the day, and the extraordinarily helpful Alastair Foley of Whelans/Foggy Notions sorted out access for me.
This one was shot with my 4 minutes on f32 rule and it worked a treat. It illustrates something interesting that starts happening when shooting singers at long exposures. Since their heads spend a large proportion of the exposure time in a roughly similar position in front of the microphone, these heads start appearing in the photographs more clearly than the rest of their bodies. So, you can clearly make out Sparhawk’s head on the right, because he is singing, whereas the bass player on the left, who was moving around quite a bit, is just a blur.
By the way, you might also notice a horizontal line passing through his head. That’s there because I don’t have a scanner capable of scanning a 4×5 neg in one pass. I have to scan the two halves of it separately, and then clumsily stitch them together in Photoshop. Sometimes you can see the join. When I have some spare cash I’ll buy an Epson v750. I’ll have spare cash some time again, right?
Traces Of The Real 
[…] The one above is of the excellent Subplots, who opened up for Retribution Gospel Choir (see previous post). Looking at both shots is like playing spot the difference – or maybe more accurately […]