Video is here (if you’re reading on facebook).

Nay bad at all… though I wish she’d done more acoustic and been a little more ad hoc. It sounded way too like her album – LIVE is meant to be A-live… not all polished and perfect.

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1. The move to London, and 1 year anniversary!
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I saw my fabulous friend Tommy gig at the Bullet Bar on Kentish Twn Rd.

I love Essay Like Nephew. There, I’ve said it.
You can download their awesome album Burrows here for free, so it’s win win!

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1. Gotye, ‘Your Heart’s a Mess’. Why have I only just discovered this tune?
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Amazing. When I got hold of it last night I ended up staying up way way past my bedtime to listen to the album in full – I just couldn’t bring myself to turn it off!

The above video is made with a radio edit. The version on the album is 6 mins long – and though rather fabulous, actually frustrates me because it takes so long to get to the juicy bit ;)

Here’s the album: Like Drawing Blood
.

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This was my first Beltane festival, and I’m definitely going to have to go again. This isn’t because I had loads of fun, but because I missed most of it through being in the wrong place at the wrong time. About 500 people were crowded around a stage, and being a first timer, my flat mate and I thought that’s where we should be too. Actually, the performers were only going to take to the stage right at the end. Once we realised, we headed off to find the party, but by then it had begun to rain, and I was too scared to have my camera out, this was proper downpour style rain! We were sodden to the core, but had loads of fun. I’m sad that I didn’t get that many photos, but at least I have an excuse to go again next year!

Whilst we were waiting around near the stage, random folk who were bored decided to get up on the stage to provide entertainment. Mostly people either did a silly dance, or wrestled each other.
Their silhouette was quite cool though:

Some folk with lampshades as hats:

Some of the lads:

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1. An old vid of the ‘fico
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I had a pretty productive last day, though it flew by. I started off with some simple portraits before being drafted in to be the page 3 girl for tomorrow’s edition! Seriously, they needed a model for a feature on page three about an old school in Edinburgh being turned into a cafe/bistro, so we collected up a table, some chairs, coffee cups and a cafetiere for a location shoot. We had it all set up on the pavement outside the school, whilst Greg laid down on the road (avoiding the odd car) to take the perfect shot. Shame about the models though. Never thought I’d be a page three girl, so that’s one ambition realised.

Local folk musician Kim Edgar is releasing her debut album, ‘Butterflies and broken glass’ I thoroughly enjoyed this shoot which was with Dan again. I think one of Dan’s went to press eventually, but I’m pretty happy with these.

An ex TT racer is turning 100 this week

Just a few more still to come, and I’ll be sure to scan a copy of the page 3 photo tomorrow!

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1. Amplifico Press Shoot
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Clearly this website has been laying a little untouched for the last couple of months, but here heralds a new beginning. I do have lots of excuses, but shan’t bore you with them. My lovely flat-mate Tommy (website here) is helping me design a more appropriate front page with my portfolio which will be going online in the next few weeks, and my mate Butler (website here) is even (possibly) designing me a logo which I shall begin to watermark my images with.

I just bought a new f.2.8 80-200mm lens which, for those that aren’t Nikon geeks, is quite expensive. I literally had to sell 5 lenses to be able to afford it. My lens bag is now very very bare (but still heavy, damn), so I shall have update my kit page to reflect that!

I now have a new list of shortcuts on my Safari which is called ‘wishlist’ and is filled with lenses ranging from £300- over £1000 in price. I wonder if I’ll ever tick them all off. Every now and again I open up all of my wishlist items on tabs and drool – then I look at my bank balance which snaps me back into reality and reminds me that I’ll need to stop procrastinating and do some actual work before I can afford any of that stuff!

I know it’s a bit late for new year’s resolutions, but I’m a bit slow:

Aim 1 – use the gear I do currently own to make beautiful photographs

Aim 2 – create beautiful portfolio with the most beautiful of those photographs

Travel the world, and be happy.

Sounds simple doesn’t it.

Reality check – On Saturday night I was proud to experience the most wonderful event that was the Amplifico Debut Album Launch Party at club Ego. It was an incredibly inspiring night, and was a most fantastic way to conclude several weeks (or years) of ridiculously hard work by the band, and I’m so proud of their achievements. However, though I feel that I’m a relatively adept live music photographer, I was trying out my new 80-200 lens that night (mentioned above), and was totally surprised by my utter uselessness. The photos really aren’t all that, and though I enjoyed the process of creating them it has been a stark reminder of how much hard work I have ahead of me. SO SO much to learn, which is definitely not a bad thing.

Below are some of the photos just for the record. The next time I go out to a gig with this lens I shall endeavor to blow the socks off this pitiful collection. Apologies to the band who were hoping for some wonderful shots of their glorious moment. Luckily, a fellow Edinburgh photographer was at the gig, and did have his head screwed on. His photos are here, and are far superior.

Ciao for now, much to do.

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My hard drive corrupted, and although at the time this seemed pretty awful, I now realise that whilst I’ve been sending it off to get repaired at great expense to various companies across the UK, I’ve spent the last couple of weeks in a very happy laptop vacuum. It’s been rather refreshing.

That said, there is a major lesson to be learnt here. Don’t ever ever forget to back up for three weeks in a row because these will be the very three weeks worth of data that you’ll end up spending hundreds of pounds getting recovered. Although I appreciate Rapid Data Recovery’s hard work in retrieving the photos that I’d been ‘too busy’ to back up, it wasn’t exactly cheap. Lesson learnt though, and over the last two weeks I have purchased a cd storage box, an enormous crate of DVD’s, a 1TB back-up drive, and even a fire safe for worst-case-scenario (although the latter may be overkill). I’ve also been blessing Mozy OnLine Backup for very quietly keeping the majority of my files online somewhere without me even realising.

So, to all of you complacent laptop users, get yerself some back-up solution or learn it the hard way.

That said, below are some photos that I took at Amplifico’s not so Album Launch party at club ego on the 29th September. I was just about to upload them when my computer broke, so sorry for the delay. Oh, I’m now going to put the galleries on external pages since the blog’s begining to take a rather long time to load with all of these galleries in it.

Many a nice shot of the ‘fico, but in my humble opinion, the ‘dancers’ ruled this party. Click below.

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You should have seen this, it was amazing! My mate Si and some ever so musical friends of his (Si’s musical too) created a table that could see and speak. On the table you placed different packages, each package containing a different sound and ability to alternate its sound. Depending on where you placed the package on the table, the sound would move around the room to match.

After months of preparation, design and creation, ‘Etiquette’ debuted in a white room down at the Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop in Leith.

Rave reviews were received during the festival, but at the end of August there was nowhere for it to go. Plans were being made to dismantle and discard this wonderful machine! But at last, someone has come to the rescue and Etiquette is now going to be set up in the Edinburgh Central Lending Library on George IV Bridge. I don’t know exactly when, but perhaps if you check back at the Etiquette website you may be able to find out more.

Here are some photos which I took during a talk and hands-on session which Si and his musical pals – also known as FOUND held near the end of the festival.

Oh, and by the way, you can download some wonderful music (yes, proper music) that was created by this machine in the steady hands of FOUND, from this link: Download

Hurrah.

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A few nights ago I was playing about with candles and long exposures in our living room, I was pretty pleased with the results. I’ll post them up later, but last night during soundcheck at an Amplifico gig I fancied a bit of something different so took a few photos like this. I’ll only post the one up because the rest were pretty blurred.

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This was the last of my Edinburgh festival gigs for SkinnyFest mag, so thank you to them for getting me into lots of wicked gigs – this one was by far my fave. My only observation would be that the lead singer made almost no contact with the audience (making it pretty hard to get face shot), as he was concentrating so hard on controlling all of the instruments surrounding him. Most of those in the crowd seemed to be nodding their heads appreciatively, but I’m sure it would have made a massive difference had the band been a little more audience aware. Again, the music was incredible, which is of course what it’s all meant to be about. Having been photographing unsigned bands for that long I was under the illusion that these signed acts were a different beast – I’m being regularly disappointed though, Jamie T, and these guys just weren’t as polished as I thought they would be. I think the enthusiasm of unsigned acts makes a big difference, this lot shouldn’t forget that.

The photographers enclosure was very very narrow and the crew had placed an enormous impassable hard-case in the middle of it. Basically this meant that the photographers had to choose which side they wanted to photograph from before the band took to the stage. Totally at a loss after asking the opinion of several members of the audience, I had a word with someone from the crew to find out where lead singer would be performing from for the first three songs. After a little think, I chose my spot. A little worryingly the vast majority of the photographers had chosen the other side, so it was just little me and another female photographer crossing our fingers. My thinking had paid off, and half-way through the second song all of the other photographers had managed to battle their way round the other side and were all now vying for the spot which I was occupying. Being a generous little lass, I gave it up and moved over, I’d already taken plenty of shots by then and wandered off to get some ‘artsy’ angles from elsewhere. Another learner.

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