On April the 21st we sadly saw The Trauma Room host it’s last show at The Crowndale as it has now found a new home at The Black Heart. For this special send off we had four great bands play for us - Thrones, Cove, High Rise and Skies In Motion. 

If you missed out Cove will be joining Holding Absence on a couple of tour dates in August and High Rise will be setting out on a headlining tour starting at the end of next week in Southampton. As for Skies In Motion they’ve managed to be finalized in the top 5 bands to play Slam Dunk Festival Midlands! If you’ve heard of or been to Slam Dunk then you must know what a huge deal this is for them - so vote for them here and you could also be in with a chance of joining them (more details here).

So as you may know I’ve now officially been announced as a photographer for Trauma PR after working with them from the end of last year! 

During the Easter weekend I headed down to The Black Heart in Camden to shoot their Easter special gig, which had a great roster of bands. All bar one band had a female band member and it was great to see more of a female representation within the music Industry. The line up consisted of Echoic, Dream State, Hunter Kill Hunter and Defences. 

Echoic just announced a headlining tour for May starting on the 16th in Nottingham and finishing up on the 27th in London. You can also catch Defences on tour with City of Ashes and Never Found in June on a short run of UK dates they’re doing from the 13th to the 17th. 

Get out there and support the music scene!

P.S. As you may have noticed I’m having to play catch up on blog posts and editing since I was away in Glasgow pretty much immediately after shooting a few gigs!

On the 25th of March I headed down to Tooting Broadway to shoot with a band, hailing from Kingston, called Harbour Sharks. (On a side note if you haven’t heard of them and want your serving of some post-hardcore goodness, give em a listen on Spotify and keep a look out for their new music coming out soon.) For a day out in March it was surprisingly sunny and I jumped at the chance to wear my sunglasses out for the first time this year. Just thinking about all that natural light to play with had me even more excited as I quickly put together a playlist on the train there. 

At the venue my assistant and I met up with the lovely events manager and the three piece band. After setting up the music and taking band suggestions from the band (A Day To Remember was a good call) we had tracks playing out across the PA system ready for our shoot. With that being said I’m sure you can imagine the little outbursts of sing-a-longs and air drumming we had! The shoot we had planned was pretty open and set without boundaries so went around the venue using whichever areas we thought would make a great photo. Luckily for us the venue we picked had an extensive selection of backgrounds and therefore the types of shots we could get. The venue also had a large amount of windows and glass so it really was perfect for a mostly natural light shoot. 

Some of my favourite images from the day included the photos against the wall of frames, in front of the bar and on the red sofa. Personally I think they’re my most clean shots and I loved how the colours, lighting and framing really came together when I finished editing them. To me they encapsulate what I envision when I think of band promo shots. I also really liked the darker edgy effect of the photos by the staircase and windows upstairs as the light only flows in from one direction. Although some of the images from those locations were too dark to use I feel that the ones I salvaged (thank you light room and Photoshop) generated a lot of emotion and moodiness. When editing these pictures I decided to utilize the lack of exposure by adding a grain to create a theme within this collection which to me evokes raw emotion. This project really enabled me to experiment with my editing style a lot and generally pushed me out of my comfort zone, I even ended up reverting back to some skills I picked up from photography AS-Level. 

Overall it was a really successful shoot (and day as I went to see The Maine later on too!) Big thank you to Harbour Sharks for being so easy and fun to work with, but most of all for choosing me to carry out their promo shoot! Also a special shout out to my girl Denielle at JDO Photos for being on hand to assist me that day - you rock! I definitely look forward to doing more photo shoots like this in the future, especially will the nice weather we’ve been having. With that being said, if you or someone you know is in need of a promo shoot etc. and wants to make the most of this beautiful weather with some photos then get in touch!

Oh and you can check out photos from the promo shoot down below!