Whatever, I went across last Wednesday to see The Autumnkind in action, none of whom, I think, have had a 36th anniversary of any sort. It goes without saying that they played a blinding set, full of energy and enthusiasm, as they were on what counts as home turf. Not that any of them actually LIVES in The Horn, but the band first came together there. If the band had chav parents, no doubt the band would have been called Horn in celebration, in the style of the Beckham progeny.

As ever, The Autumnkind’s house image style evened out the vagaries of music venue lighting to provide once more a consistent set of images. As this is a photo blog I’ve included a couple of images to give you a flavour -

Caleb gets his sensitive parts caught in his effects panel....

The first is probably the best shot I’ve taken of Caleb; full on rock n roll with not a hint of ballad or techno.

Marc looks well pleased with himself

The consensus, and Marc plainly agreed, was that this was the best The Autumnkind had played for a while, with the added benefit of two brand new songs given an airing.

The full set of images from this gig can be seen HERE

Anyway, the nature of her work is that soon after she’s finished it the happy recipient wants to go home and have a bath, which rather ruins the effect. Important work therefore needs to be photographed – and in fact there are body painting competitions where the entries are made as photos. I have done some competition work for Juliet before and that resulted in a win, although on this occasion Juliet’s work was a design she just fancied doing without a specific objective in view.

The process of doing a whole body is quite involved and time consuming, so I was only in for the last hour or so, but I documented some of the process and the final result as shown below.

painting in process

What an amazing design - body paint by Juliet Eve

More of Juliet’s work can be seen at Facade and HERE

I started the day with a team of barstaff who were planning to do an abseil for charity, swiftly followed by a lovely lady who was doing a coffee morning for charity. Nothing exceptional save for the fact that she’s been doing it for THIRTY years! That was followed by a baseball match. Who knew we played baseball here and that there was an important match in Hemel? I then went on to a triathlon in Aldbury, followed by an open day at the Fire Station. I rounded off the day with a cricket match and a rugby league match. A busy day, with a lot of varied challenges photographically, not least of which was catching the appropriate action.

Anyhow, much editing later I submitted a disc to the paper and sat back and waited for the paper to come out.

To my surprise and delight (there was a lot of sports coverage and I wouldn’t normally consider myself a sports photographer) I had 12 pictures published with something from all the assignments included. A good day all round!

Hemel Cricket club

To view the selection I sent to the Gazette, click HERE

This year was no exception and as ever the theme running through the weekend was people having a good time. There’s no place here for introspective emos; this is all about up beat music and audience involvement.

Barney, off Boogie Train fame

First up was a band called Barney’s Boogie Train who had the local Outlaws MC along to support them.

One of Barney's singers....

The eponimous Barney was ably supported by a bassist and drummer and later joined by three very decorative ladies playing rock and blues standards.

Barney's bassist, DT Shepherd

The second band on the Friday night were called High Above L.A playing a mixture of their own brass driven feel good songs and well known covers. These guys come into the old friends category as I saw them last year and they now use my photographs. The stage alone was no where near big enough for this band , so they took to playing/singing in the audience space too. They have possibly the worlds bendiest bassist.

The world's bendiest bassist? Bernd from High Above LA

Heinrich from High Above LA

High Above LA's high octane front man and half the brass section

Saturday started with an old school rock and roll band named after a brand of condom……. Mr G and his Billy Boys. These guys were amazingly enthusiastic and took audience involvement to new levels. A group of rock and roll dancers, mostly of a similar vintage to the music, came along and added to the spectacle. As an aside, the band’s bassist also plays in a Beatles covers band and is touring the UK in early October at venues including the Horns in Watford and The Cavern in Liverpool. The full list of dates can be found HERE.

Mr G himself, Guido, gets up close and personal with the audience...

This was another band for whom the stage wasn’t big enough. The guitarist came out amongst a throng of ladies, whilst the front man Mr G himself singled out just one.

On another stage at the other end of the town a band called Chickens’ Nightmare were doing their stuff amid swirling smoke., playing old school rock in the style of Thin Lizzy and Whitesnake amongst others. Christian & Co are likewise past customers of mine and it was good to have the opportunity to meet up again.

Chickens' Nightmare L to R Alex, Heiko and Christoph

High Power vocals from the Chickens' Nightmare frontman, Alex

These guys did at least keep to the stage though!

Following them was a tribute band to a German act that I have to confess I had never heard of. By all accounts though, they do an exceptional job of representing the work of Marius Muller Westernhagen, both in terms of looking like him (just the singer obviously) and sounding like the genuine article. Certainly, they were very slick and professional, and greeted with entusiastic applause. The band is named after one of Westernhagen’s songs, ‘SEXXY’.

SEXXY frontman, Michael Hahler

SEXXY saxophonist Catharina Rohlfing and bassist

SEXXY, the Westernhagen coverband

The final band of the weekend are something of a cult act, having appeared for the past 13 years; they are very much old friends and are in fact the band that started me on the path to professional photography.  Major Healey are not so much a tribute to one band as a tribute to a whole era, the glam rock 70′s.

Female lead for Major Healey, Miss Kitty

Porter Ricks, lead guitar

Danny Wilde, Major Healey's shock rock front man

As well as a smoke machine, we were treated to pyrotechnics and lots of glitter and outrageous costumes. For reasons that have never been made clear, but possibly to protect their anonymity, the band members all have pseudonyms taken from old TV programmes….

All the above bands have websites and/or MySpace pages, links to which follow:

Barney’s Boogie Train High Above L.A Mr G and his Billy Boys Chickens’ Nightmare SEXXY Major Healey

A full selection of my images of these bands can be seen by going HERE and selecting the appropriate band name

3/5 of Trail, who were clearly having a good time

Trail's frontman, Charlie in a high contrast edit

Trail have a website where you can listen to some of their music and catch up on where they’re playing next.

A selection of my pictures of the their set can be seen HERE.

Also on the bill were my old friends The Autumnkind. In Caleb’s case even older as it was his birthday on the night. My pictures of their set can be seen HERE

Saturday involved moving The Autumnkind one step closer to the release of their new, as yet untitled, album. The outer cover artwork has been agreed and completed, but there are still some gaps on the inside, so off to Hadley Green for a photo session.

Hadley Green , for those that don’t know is a large patch of greenery in Barnet in North London. There’s not much grass in London, so this is a good place for walks, picnics and exercising dogs.

We attracted some attention from passers-by, most of whom just watched from afar. However one couple who were out with their two labradors managed to get involved in the shoot. Both dogs got into the pictures but carelessly didn’t demand a model release for their images so won’t be minting it when The Autumnkind make it big.

The results of the shoot are still under wraps for the present but are looking good.

On Sunday, it was off to St Albans for a world record attempt. 134 Tai Chi clubs across the country coming together for the worlds largest Tai Chi lesson including an estimated 10,000 people at Wiltshire’s WOMAD festival. The organiser at St Albans was Michael Richards,  who runs the Herts Tai Chi Academy and the whole thing was in support of Breakthrough Breast Cancer research and there is a donation page at http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/taichirecord whether or not you took part in the lesson!

And yes, there were doggy friends there too including a couple of labradors who wanted to get in on the action. Doncha just love em!

The results of Sunday’s live performance shoot can be seen HERE.

The Autumnkind have their own website at www.theautumnkind.com where you can hear some of their songs an see my pictures of them.

To go to my homepage click HERE

OK, so you’re a musician, performer, actor or whatever. What’s the image you want to put across to promoters, agents, producers? Have you even thought about the image you project?

However you want to ‘look’ photography comes into it so that the public has a consistent image in their mind of who you are and what you represent; that image is projected across a whole range of materials – flyers, posters CD sleeves to name but a few.

I noticed today that NME are taking this a stage further and promoting the sale of T-Shirts adorned with a print of one of a series of NME covers – artists whose look was so good, NME wants to get in on the action a second time.

Not everyone makes it onto an NME cover, but getting your face(s) onto a T-shirt is within reach. But first you need the look, and a photo of it…

Joe Winston, whose picture I have included above, can be found on the web HERE

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