On a more positive note..

That last blog post was a bit of a downer but I thought I'd put up some stuff which was a bit more on the positive side.

I've officially caught up on all my editing which I'm really happy about and I've managed to upload it all.

Hearts Under Fire - Islington Academy

MiMi Soya & Scarlett Girls - Facedown

London Rollergirls Season 3 Bout 6

Miss Led - Big Chill House

I photographed Miss Led painting a section of The Big Chill House in Kings Cross. She worked on it over two weeks at the end of April. We talked about the idea of doing a video and although I can't film anything on my camera I thought about editing a series of photos into a stop motion video. It was a lot different to shot. I spent less time thinking about each individual shots and tried to shoot a bit looser. I'm fairily happy with how it came out and I know how I would do it differently if I do it again (which I would like to do). Miss Led has another edit of the video with some shots of the finished rooms but I'm more interested how the work gets done than the finished pieces.

Miss Led - Big Chill House redesign from Derek Bremner on Vimeo.

Hevy Fest 2010

Recently I've been very behind on photo editing. I've moved house and between that and work I've just really struggled to find time to get down to photos. This has stressed me out quite a lot. Thankfully I'm all up to date and I've got about four blogs lined up which I need to get through and get up.

A couple of weeks ago now I had a photopass for Hevy Fest. Firstly I'd like to say that the line up was fantastic and I saw some great bands over the weekend but I thought the organisation was pretty poor.

Transport to and from the festival was a joke, there were barely any buses and the festival didn't put on any shuttle buses or extra services like pretty much all festivals that aren't close to anything. They hadn't made the campsite big enough so there wasn't enough room for everyone when I turned up on the Saturday.

The most unorganised part of the festival was the security. The festival organisers had stated that the photo pit rules were three songs with no flash. This is pretty standard and I think everyone expects to have those rules but the security changed the rules for every band and just made it up as they were going on. We were allowed three songs for the first band but every photographer was told that we 'didn't have the right type of photopass' to shoot the second band. This resulted in at least 25 photographers going to the box office and complaining. They restated the three song rule and sorted it with the security. During the third band of the they kicked us out after half of the first song.

The security were saying they were kicking us out because of safety but virtually every time they did there were no crowd surfers and no rowdy fans or anything like that. They just seemed to ignore everything they were told and did what ever they were felt like. I know we were 'press' and 'in the way' but I just think if you are going to make rules then stick to them. Don't mess us about as it just makes everyone elses life hard.

There were two smaller tents with stages and because of the high number of photographers they were limiting how many photographers could be in the pit at one time which meant I had to make sure I got to the stages early to avoid being turned away.

I managed to shoot Glassjaw, The Subways, Lower Than Atlantis, Throats, Devil Sold His Soul, Young Guns, Bury Tomorrow, Gallows, Comeback Kid, The Computers, Rolo Tomassi, Hearts Under Fire, Trash Talk, Santa Karla, Dead Swans, TRC and Feed The Rhino.

The lighting for Gallows was terrible and once again we were kicked out after one song and this resulted in me taking the worst photos of Gallows I've shot. Was so disapointed. Getting to shoot Glassjaw was a dream come true and I'm thankful for that experience.

Another band I loved that weekend was The Subways. Having seen them before there were several things I was hoping and waiting for. The first was Billy has a habbit of doing massive jumps off the drum kit and the second is he tends to get in amongst the crowd or stage dive during their last song which is normally 'Rock & Roll Queen'. I manage to get a good spot in the middle of the stage and I managed to nail the jump and I made sure I had my camera all set up and ready for the last song and the minute I saw him getting ready to jump in I made a quick dash straight into the middle of the crowd and got some nice shots of him crowd surfing. I was also reminded of how much I love photographing Rolo Tomassi. They have this really nice swagger and stage presence and are just so easy to shoot.

I had a good time despite the trouble with security (I'm very thankful to Hevy for giving me a pass) and I got to hang about with some good people including some fellow photographers Ben and Penny.

I feel a little disapointed in some of the sets of photos as I've stressed over these photos for at least two weeks and once I got them sorted I felt a bit like 'is that it?'.

All the photos from the weekend can be seen here.

Hearts Under Fire - Underage Festival

Hearts Under Fire have had a really amazing run of festival shows recently and on Sunday they played Sonisphere and Underage Festival in the same day. I was hoping to shoot them at both but Sonisphere fell through because they didn't get back to the girls at all about my pass.

I headed up to meet them at Victoria Park for Underage Fest and despite some trouble getting in (thanks to a really disorganised box office and a million entrances for different people I got to catch them play. I really like shooting outdoors with natural light and I think what little style I have works in this kind of setting.

They were playing on a bandstand which meant there were big pillars blocking some of the view of Nicky and Steph but the girls sounded great.

It was really nice getting to chill out with them when they finished backstage and watched them be interviewed for the Red Bull Bedroom Jam website. I'm really hoping this is the start of something for them and they can carry this momentum on.

I think the highlight was watching and photographing Steph and Lexi having a water fight with their friend Tim (before having to do another interview soaking wet).

I'm hoping the photos of them backstage is something a little different from me.

They want me to do their next set of promos which I'm both happy about and kinda nervous. I don't want to let the girls down and leave them with a shit set of photos but I don't really want to pass up the oppertunity. I'm just not very good with models and getting something good will be a struggle. It doesn't help that the last set of photos they had done were done by Tom Barnes and were great. I loved the style. I know it's not a competition and I'm not trying to out do Tom but by the same token if the photos aren't up to scratch they will look even worse when put beside other great photos.

I'm crossing my fingers for some good news that may or may not come on Wednesday and I've got some photos from a gig I shot last night (Trash Talk, Polar Bear Club, Gallows and Sick Of It All) to edit and Upload. I'm also meant to be shooting Hevy Fest this weekend but I feel like thats going to go horribly wrong.

The other Hearts Under Fire photos can be seen here.

Hearts Under Fire - Kingston Act Theatre

I meant to write this blog before I went away but I didn't really get much of a chance. I went to see Hearts Under Fire supporting Don Broco at the Kingston Act Theatre. I'd never been to this venue before and it Kingston College's drama theatre so it was more of a makeshift venue. It had a very low stage and really beautiful side lighting rigs but the sound wasn't great. It looked more like a film set for a music video than a venue.

The security were insanely strict but that was mostly because it was an all ages event. Lecarla were also playing which was cool as I'd seen them play with HUF before.

Hearts Under Fire killed it as usual and I like the shots I got. Thanks to the size and spacing of the stage and venue, I got to try and take some shots fitting in all the members of HUF in one shot.

Lecarla

Don Broco

Hearts Under Fire

Lecarla photos can be seen here.

The rest of the Don Broco photos are here.

The HUF photos are here.

Hearts Under Fire & Download Festival

Hearts Under Fire won a wild card spot to play on the Red Bull Jam stage on Sunday at the Download Festival.

The girls were kind enough to sort me out with a photopass but I was only allowed to shoot bands on the stage they were playing.

I used to go to download every year but decided not to go last year because it just works out too expensive but I went for the day this year. The line up for the day wasn't great and there were only a few bands I was interested in but it was worth it to get to shoot HUF. I had to get up pretty early and make my way there (including a random cab ride with two Polish and two Columbian people going as well).

I decided before going that I wanted to shoot some shots of the crowds and people there. The day started off insanely sunny and I was worried about being sunburnt but as the day went on it got overly cloudy until it POURED with rain. I was absolutely drenched.

The great thing about the rain was as HUF were playing inside, a lot of people decided to go check them out so they could watch a band and shelter from the rain, this meant by the time they came on the tent was completely full.

I got to speak to them a bit before they went on and despite being nervous they went out there and played one of the best sounding sets I've seen them do. The lighting was really nice and I've decided that yellow lighting is my favourite light to shoot.

It really meant a lot to be there for such a special day for the band. It's the biggest crowd they've played to and they seemed to go down pretty well. Fingers crossed some good things come from this.

Well done girls, I'm insanely pleased for and proud of you all!

The other great thing about Download was I got to bump into Benjamin Gibson who took some pretty cool shots at the festival and Andrew Kendall. Andrew Kendall was one of the first 'big' music photographers who's work I saw when I first got started and was someone I've always looked up to. I got to have a really nice chat to him and am really thankfull he took the time to sit down and talk to me.

I took a very quick shot of the girls before they went onstage...

The rest of the HUF photos are here.

Shots of the people and crowds at Download

The other photos are here.

I left early due to the insane rain and ended up having two hours to wait for my train. I was pretty tired, soaking wet and a bit fed up. The only thing I could think to do to pass time was to take some photos of myself in the waiting room. Thankfully the station was empty. I

The other photos I shot in the waiting room are here.

Rolo Tomassi & Hearts Under Fire

So somehow this week I've ended up at four shows. It's been good a I've had pretty different experiences at all of them.

I found out pretty last minute that Rolo Tomassi were playing at Rough Trade on Thursday night, I raced over there from work to make sure I could get a wristband and it was totally worth it.

Rolo Tomassi really are great live and are like a whirlwind when they play. The thing I loved about seeing them at Rough Trade was the fact that because the stage is quite small it meant that James and Joseph had to play on the floor which just gave them more space to throw themselves about. Before they came on the lighting was quite decent but as they started RT dropped the lights a bit which was a shame. It was a lot different to a normal show as they were taking request for songs to play.

Pretty happy with the photos as a set and I managed to get a kinda cool jump shot as well.

The other Rolo Tomassi photos are here.

Yesterday I went to see Hearts Under Fire at The Garage. I've said it before and I'll say it again. I love this band. They were on first but on quite late time-wise for a support. I got to hang with them for a chunk of time before they went on and had a long chat with Lexi when they were done. It really is impossible not to be smiling and laughing when I'm around those girls. They are probably the band I'd love to tour with the most, I reckon it would be so much fun. A dream would be to tour with them on Warped.

The photos themselves aren't brilliant. There was pretty much no lighting for them other than a faint hint of red and green and the stage it pretty small. The one good thing about the small stage is you can get down the sides.

Needless to say another superb performance.

The photos from the Hearts Under Fire show are here.