Teenage Cancer Trust at the Royal Albert Hall

Mid-way though Friday my friend Andy Paradise unexpectedly phoned me up asking if I could assist him at the Royal Albert Hall for the final couple of nights of the Teenage Cancer Trust concerts, another photographer had left the job at short notice and an extra pair of hands were required.

This was an offer I could not refuse: the two nights in question would feature Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds and Frank Turner, both of whose music I love. I, however, was to be in Bristol most of Saturday with my brother and nephew to visit the Bloodhound SSC factory. Bloodhound SSC for those who don't know, is a project headed by Richard Noble to create and drive a car capable of travelling over 1000mph. It was incredible to see and hear about and will be a future blog post here.

Anyway, back to the case in point. I had a 120 mile journey in-between the two venues and two hours to travel from one to the other. Normally such a long journey would be punctuated by delays due to roadworks, random lane closures because it was a weekend, an accident, slow congested traffic due to poor weather or simply all of the aforementioned! For once, the vagarities of the British motorway system were on my side and I made the journey in a little over 2 hours...

...without breaking any speed limits.

I arrived at the Royal Albert Hall and met up with Andy. My main task for the two evenings would be as digital operator, which entails taking the images as soon as possible after they have been taken, quickly selecting the very best images from the photo shoot, quickly editing the images in Adobe Lightroom, and then sending the images to the Teenage Cancer Trust media relations team and a picture agency for distribution to the media.

The two evenings went without a hitch. Andy captured many great images and the pictures were dispatched promptly by myself to the required parties. As a bonus I got to see the bands play when I wasn't working, up close and personal in the press pit at the front of the stage.

I didn't have my Nikon's with me so for a few souvenir snaps I had to resort to my iPhone. Although the quality does not come close to the pictures produced by a DSLR, smart phone cameras are remarkably good when the lighting complements their limited abilities. Compare the photos of Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds and Frank Turner with the image of Idlewild below and you'll see what I mean. The image of Idlewild requires less exposure latitude due to the absence of a bright spotlight, which allows the iPhone to render the image in an adequate manner. A DSLR can cope with the high exposure latitude in the other two images far more effectively.

On a final note, visit Teenage Cancer Trust's website to find out more about what they do, they are an incredible cause. If you don't fancy that, why not take a moment to text 'GIVE' to 70500 to donate £5 to Teenage Cancer Trust.


Idlewild (Image taken on an iPhone. Note how the light in this scene can be captured effectively despite the iPhone camera's limited capabilities in high contrast and low light scenarios).

Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds (Image taken on an iPhone. Note how the high contrast light in this scene exceeds the iPhone camera's limited capabilities).

Frank Turner and the Sleeping Souls (Image taken on an iPhone. Note how the high contrast light in this scene exceeds the iPhone camera's limited capabilities).

That's all for today. More to follow...