Here’s a few more shots from Allan with a slightly different twist this time; none of them are live performance shots. We’ll let him explain.

I always like the challenge of doing something a little bit different; new artist, new venue, just change things up a bit. The shots featured below happened for a variety of reasons and the one thing they have in common is that they aren’t onstage shots. They’re all shot with available light and not really posed; it’s more about letting the artists arrange themselves and trying to capture the moment where it all works.

The Velveteen Orkestra @Pizza Express

This was a very, very impromptu shoot. I was packing away my gear after the gig and Dan asked if I could just do a few shots that they could use for promotion. He asked me where he wanted the band to sit and Sarah was already sitting under a downlighter where she was perfectly lit. The only thing I had to do was seat the band together and fire the shutter as they stared grinned and flicked the v’s. This is one of the two shots that I really liked from the shoot, because it captured something essential about all three characters.

Simba Jindu @The Camden Chapel

This was Saara Kaldma’s first headline gig. Simba has played drums alongside Saara in various line-ups, including Lisa Canny’s band and he’s great percussionist as well as being a genuinely lovely guy as well. When I shoot at The Camden Chapel, I always try to get a few soundcheck shots because the show lighting can be a bit under-powered; very atmospheric but challenging for available light photography. I tend to shoot low-key, high contrast stuff, but this shot works as a high-key shot, emphasising the optimism of Simba’s infectious smile.

KAT ‘Rise’ video shoot

Whenever I get a message from KAT inviting me along to a shoot I know it’s going to be interesting, whether it’s a gig or a video shoot. This was a video shoot for KAT’s song ‘Rise’ at a church in Hoxton where KAT played an angel. The lighting was a bit of a challenge, but I think we just about got away with it.

Belle Roscoe@Pizza Express

Another impromptu Pizza Express shot, this time in the famous Green Room. Julia Gurry popped her head round the door of the Green Room and asked me if I would take a few shots. As younger brother Matty will tell you, that’s not really a request, it’s a summons. Anyway, the light’s pretty good, so I was happy to have a go and I think the result was pretty good. It was a rush job that I missed the fact that the toilet door was open and you can just see the toilet bowl. You can also see that Brother Strut have left their mark – I included that deliberately.

Morganway@Green Note

The Green Note gig that sold out without any artists being announced. It was billed as ‘The Road to Madison Square Gardens’ (the one in New York and not the proposed monstrosity in Stratford) and it was Morganway supported by Isabella Coulstock. Kari Jones (the sensible side of the Jones partnership) wanted a few shots with Morganway, then we moved on to shooting the band on Parkway outside Green Note. I liked the city backdrop of Camden Parkway and the band always look great.

Music Riot’s based in London; that’s not boasting or bragging, it’s just the way it is. We try to cover gigs across the UK; we’ve sent Allan to cover gigs in Staffordshire, Leicester, Edinburgh and Fife in the past (he is actually from Fife originally), but London’s where we live and where we see most of our gigs. There’s a thing that’s common to London gig venues, particularly pubs, that you won’t always find across the rest of the country. We’ll leave it to Allan to amplify.

It’s all about property prices, particularly in Central London. If you have a property in a prime site, you need to devote all of the possible space on the ground floor to customers and move everything else upstairs or downstairs. How many ground floor toilets do you see on London pubs? It’s a similar thing with live music; a stage, mixing desk and PA take up a lot of space, so stick them down in the basement or upstairs. I’m going to focus on the basements here.

Simple Fiction @Underworld

I was shooting this particular gig in Camden because two bands I knew were on the bill. This shot is of the band that I didn’t know. The lighting was fairly underpowered and there was nothing at all on the drum seat. The one photographic rule I have that I never break is that I don’t use flash – ever. Yet this shot looks like it’s flashlit. The band had asked the lighting engineer to use strobes a lot during their set and I really wanted to get a shot of the drummer who was very active and not well-lit so it was time to play the odds; during an extended strobe session, I fired the shutter on burst mode hoping that one of the activations would coincide with a strobe flash. It did, and froze the action perfectly. Result.

Natalie Lindi @Pizza Express, Holborn

This is an interesting basement venue and I’ve shot here quite a few times. Normally, basement space is used because ground floor space is busy but this Pizza Express doesn’t attract a lot of passing trade outside working hours and the basement gig space is normally much busier than the ground floor space. This Success Express gig was the first time I saw Natalie Lindi and I was blown away. Her songs and delivery were superb and she was incredibly photogenic; I don’t know that I could ask for anything more, except a few more opportunities to shoot Natalie again.

Lisa Canny @ Crypt Lates

Lisa’s another one of those people that I never tire of photographing; she always has a dramatic and intense onstage presence. She’s also an incredible musician, songwriter and performer fusing traditional Celtic roots with hip-hop and pop to create a totally original genre. I like this shot because it shows Lisa cracking a joke (which isn’t unusual) and the response of the band who obviously weren’t expecting whatever she said. Knowing Lisa it could have been absolutely anything. However you look at it, it’s a fascinating tableau.

Danni Nicholls @229 The Venue

229 The Venue – not one, but two venues, both underground. This gig was in the smaller room with about a 200 capacity, where the lighting’s reasonable and there are some nice angles. Danni’s another artist that I always like to shoot – she’s very animated and totally committed on stage and it always shows through in the photos. Her songs are styled in Americana settings but lyrically most of them are very English; it’s a difficult trick to pull off, but Danni does it with style and aplomb. She gives her all on stage; it’s up to the photographer to capture it.

Say Anise @Pizza Express, Holborn

From the same Pizza Express gig as the Natalie Lindi shot. The big difference is that I’ve photographed Emily loads of times. Her onstage persona reflects the style of her songs; she’s lively, full of fun and just a little bit unpredictable. Keep the camera pointed in Emily’s direction and you’ll get gold at some point. I’m pleased with this shot because it’s more colourful than my usual Pizza Express shots and because it captures that slightly mischievous smile that Emily does. And I have to say that Emily and her fellow Say Anise band member Adrien are lovely people.

Monochrome; it just keeps on hanging in there, After about 1960, the mass market had adopted colour film as the norm and black and white photography was seen as old-fashioned by anyone other than photography enthusiasts. It’s a common thing; the public embraces the new and instantly rejects the old leaving it to claw its way back. Just look at the resurgence of vinyl among music enthusiasts. Even my first attempts at gig photography included quite a few rolls of black and white film. Black and white TV is virtually gone now, with fewer than 5,000 black and white TV licences across the UK, but monochrome lives on in arthouse films and photography, particularly gig photography. Why? The glib answer is that sometimes it just looks better. Maybe the comments on some of these photos will help answer the question.

Cloudy Galvez @ Pizza Express, Holborn

Cloudy’s someone that normally works well in colour, particularly with a bit of interesting lighting but this shot at Pizza Express was lit purely in purple, so it was a monochrome shot before processing it as black and white. One of the things that makes black and white shots work is high contrast, which this shot definitely has. I break two of my photography rules in this shot; there’s a microphone in front of Cloudy’s face and there’s a silhouette from the audience cutting in to the bottom left corner, but Cloudy’s gesture and the eyes looking straight down the lens (which they actually weren’t, Cloudy told me she had no idea I was taking that shot) make the image work.

Jenny Colquitt @Green Note

This is a shot from a few weeks ago. Green Note’s a fabulous venue and, if you know how to work the angles, you can get some really nice shots. If an artist’s wearing something really colourful, you can get some great colour shots. Jenny was wearing neutral colours, so monochrome was always going to be the way to go. This shot was taken from just behind the mixing desk, giving a viewpoint that you can’t always get at this venue and the shadows created by Jenny’s hat add to the contrast of the shot.

James Sayer @St Martin-in-the-Fields

The Crypt is another one of those venues that has fairly monochrome lighting; unless there are strikingly-coloured stage clothes, black and white is going to be the best choice. This shot came towards the end of the gig and it was one of those unique moments. James was joined on stage (and at the same piano) by his brother and his father. It took a few attempts to get the perfect angle for the shot, but the end result really works.

Jana Varga album launch @Sound Lounge

This is a lucky combination of knowing the perfect shooting angles at a venue and having something interesting happen while you’re using one of those angles. There’s a position where you can shoot the artist against a completely black background; if you happen to be there when something interesting happens, then you automatically get a good shot. On this occasion, Jana (who is incredibly photogenic) created a perfect shape and it was just a question of pressing the shutter release.

Martin Harley (Harley Kimbro Lewis) @Landmark Arts Centre

This was my first visit to this venue in a deconsecrated church, where they get everything right. They look after the audience well, the sound is excellent and they pay attention to lighting the stage effectively for the audience and any passing photographers. This shot is one of the rare few that look good in colour and black and white, but the monochrome just edges the contest. It’s always a joy to shoot Martin (and his partners on this night Daniel Kimbro and Sam Lewis) and this shot captures something of the real Martin Harley.