A few weeks ago my little brother announced that he had a gig we could all attend with one of his numerous bands: ‘Sweet’s Hot 6’.  Now, I am a huge fan of all Teggy’s (my little brother) endeavours, but this announcement got me particularly giddy. See, the thing is, Sweet’s Hot 6 aren’t just any band.

They are freaking awesome.

Seriously, they are soooo good.  It is always a joy to hear and see them play – made even better the last time I saw them as they played at my other brother, Ed’s wedding.  And they didn’t disappoint this time either.

Made up of umm, 6 of them, Teg met his fellow band mates when he was studying his A-levels.  The lads: Phil, Tom, Sam, Teg and Tim are firm friends and extremely talented musicians.  The gig was all in order to raise money for Old Winstonian’s Tennis Club, and was set in a marquee outside with an awesome cold buffet.

As soon as I walked in, I knew I would be facing some serious challenges photo-wise.  The boys’ perform in all black, topped with a red tie, and the lighting choice complemented that.  Massive red par cans.  If you don’t know, strong reds and strong blues are the bane of your camera sensor.  Right on the end of the RGB colour spectrum, you lose all the contrast and detail of your images – if you’re not careful, you end up with all your photos looking like this:

So how do you fix it?  Bust our your flashes of course. By using my flashes on a high power, I could shoot a lot faster and kill the ambient (red) in the room, and paint the boys in a more neutral blue.  Now, the problem I faced in this situation was that it was a live gig – and I only had two speedlights.  This meant I couldn’t re-shape my lighting too much mid-gig, as I had to leave my stands in and around the band during their performance.  I’m pretty chuffed with how they came out.

During the interval, the boys treated us to some awesome barbershop.  Needless to say, it went down a treat.

Overall it was an awesome evening.  Sweet’s Hot 6 were as good as ever, the Tennis Club raised a few quid, and Teg and his pals all got some photos I hope they’ll be pleased with 😉

Thanks for reading guys – loads more work to come!