2013 Music Photography Highlights!

Hey everyone,
Well it's that time again folks, the time of reflection upon 2013. It's been another good year for photographing gigs albeit a slightly smaller amount of work than last year due to having a busy personal life but hopefully that will change in the near future.
Let's start off with the first gig I photographed this year, the almighty Kerrang Tour 2013 at the 02 Academy in Glasgow, quite a big one and I was super happy I managed to get on the bill for this. I had the pleasure of photographing Fearless Vampire Killers once again who are always a great act to work with, aswell as Tonight Alive and Chiodos who I hadn't previously seen but I thoroughly enjoyed photographing both bands and although the lighting was a tad red and dark I still managed to get some great shots, my personal favourite being the one of Chiodos at the start of this post.

The next gig was later in April, I photographed the lovely Purson at King Tuts in Glasgow, they are a relatively new group from London and as I've been told the photos do the speaking for themselves with this one, especially the first one below of Rosie, another personal favourite of mine from the year. The band have so much emotion and passion when they perform and it really shows through when photographing them. The lighting for this gig again was mostly dark and red so it was a minor challenge but I'm still glad of the outcome, and the band liked the photos as they posted them on their social sites and my Flickr page somehow managed to achieve near 500 views on each photo in a day, so I was really happy!

In July, I had the opportunity of photographing Heaven's Basement at Ivory Blacks in Glasgow, and I was super excited for this gig as I'd been wanting to photograph the band since earlier in the year. The show was absolutely amazing, infact one of the best I've been to for a long time. Again, the lighting was fairly dark but nothing you wouldn't expect in a smaller venue, aside from that I was really pleased with the shots I managed to achieve. I'm also more than happy that the band's guitarist used one of the photos for his Facebook page, it's always great to see that the musicians themselves appreciate the photos!
These shots were all taken for Is This Music? Magazine accompanied with reviews of the show that I have written so feel free to check those out if you'd like to read more about the gigs.
To conclude my post, here's to another of year of photography ahead and I wish everyone all the best for 2014.
Nicola. x

Kerrang Tour 2013, 02 Academy Glasgow, Live Photos.

Hey everyone,
Finally back with some live music shots for you all. I recently went along to photograph and review the Kerrang Tour 2013, it's infact my first gig of the year and it feels good to be photographing music again. It was an awesome show but if you want to check out what I had to say about it, go and have a read of my photoreview for Is This Music at, http://www.isthismusic.com/kerrang-tour (coming soon)
Onto the show's layout etc...firstly I must admit that the lighting was pretty horrible, most of the time it was red and many music photographers will agree with me that 99% of the time that's a bad thing and also means most of the photos go in the bin...however I was actually pleased with most of the red shots for once, and some of them have become my new favourites!

I've already posted a couple of the photos on Tumblr and it's fairly easy to see that Tonight Alive have the biggest fanbase, one of the shots of their singer has already managed to reach 151 notes, which is totally crazy considering I don't have many people added on my account over there, haha. Anyway, there's a few more than what I've posted on here so if you'd like to check out the whole set from the night, go over to my Flickr page, http://www.flickr.com/photos/nicolasharkeyphotography, hopefully it won't be long before I'm photographing another gig again, and I'll be back with a blog post for you all very soon! I'll leave you now with one of my favourite shots of Chiodos from the Kerrang Tour.
Thanks,
Nicola. x

New Year...New Look!

Happy New Year everyone!
As you may have noticed I have finally got around to giving my blog (and all my social networking sites) a much needed makeover! There's a new banner image, background and lots of other little bits and pieces that I have been working on the past few days. I think it's really coming together now, normally when I'm working on photos I only get the chance to update one or two things and it's never the full works, so I'm glad I finally got around to finishing it.
The tiny screenshot below is what my Tumblr page looks like now, if you want to check it out the link is, http://nicolasharkeyphotography.tumblr.com, all of the links to my social sites are actually on the right side of my blog if anyone wants to check out the others.

Some people may have already noticed but I also changed the header image on my Twitter page and it's actually a picture of my photo passes! Looking back at all of them really makes me sentimental, which probably sounds pretty sad but it's true, there are so many good memories tagged with those passes, it's good to look back at them every now and again. Ah anyway, I think I should stop rambling here before I go completely off topic as usual.
There's going to be another post very soon, I'm actually finalising the finishing touches on some of the shots as I type this...so as always stay tuned.
Nicola. x