Last Sunday I trundled up towards East Croydon to catch the weekly lunch-time jazz gig at The Green Dragon. This week featured a brassy jazz-fusion veteran Derek Nash and Sax Appeal.
I knew the local music scene shifted from The Ship to The Green Dragon a while back, after the Hogshead sold up and the facade was painted green, but never managed to check it out until yesterday.
Though a recent convert, I like jazz. Live jazz works better than listening to it solitarily on an mp3 player — I don’t know why really, maybe because the intensity and dynamics of the music doesn’t translate well in recorded form generally.
Though a budding fan, I went with an ulterior motive: I wanted to try my hand at gig photography. I thought a small local venue might be an easy start, so armed with nothing more than a Sony 50mm/F2.8, a borrowed Tamron 90mm/F2.8 and my little Sony A200, I gave it a go.
A few things challenged me, as would anyone photographing gigs. The lighting leaves something to be desired - like light mainly. So I cranked the ISO to 1600, the aperture opened slightly wider than a medium-sized volcano but still had slow shutter speeds!
I managed to get a table right in front, so a good vantage point. The front of the stage was a line of tables in front of a line of tables, with a few supporting beams in between tables to ensure complete lack of movement.
Stage design included roll blinds, black curtains, ducts, vents and mains sockets. The lights were quite good all in all, and the lighting guy did a good job. But the stage lights failed to reach the back of the stage for the most part so the drummer and shy keyboard player stayed mostly in darkness. I lost a few shots to the limitations of a cheaper camera - the sensor just can’t do strong red and green lights properly and the noise required quite a bit of post-processing fu in order to make them acceptable.
For all that I had a fantastic time, I loved the music and felt completely at ease. I tried out some ideas which worked well. I think all things considered I feel pretty happy about the experience.