Bell X-1 @Google

The thoroughly excellent Bell X-1 (The band, not the first aircraft to break the speed of sound, although I suppose that too was somewhat excellent) dropped into Google a few months back to play a lunchtime set for Musicians@Google.

By now I hope I'm getting an idea for what makes a good photo, or at least what may look interesting, so I perched myself up at the front row for both the sound check and the gig itself and took a few shots.

After each gig, the organisers of Musicians@Google in Dublin arrange for a picture of the artist to be hung outside the venue, along with a guitar that everyone so far has signed. Since getting 3 band members into one shot was next to impossible, I decided to have a go at making a montage photo out of a single shots of all 3. The outcome, for better or for worse, can be seen below!

Josh Ritter @ Google

Next up in the Musicians@Google series was Idaho's own Josh Ritter. Josh's set was probably the most polished to date, or maybe it's that I was a little bit more familiar with his songs and style. Either way, it was very good indeed.

Having had some practise already with the other musicians@ gigs, I thought this one went quite well. I'm also a bit more familiar with the camera settings and was able to get everything setup as I wanted for the light, etc. I also had my first play around with contrast settings in GIMP for the B&W shot, hopefully it made it look better!

St. Patrick's Day Lunch @ Google

Google had a St Patrick's Day themed lunch on the 16th March, complete with Irish Dancers and some traditional music. As I've taken to having my camera with me for just such an occasion, here's a few shots!

Fionn Regan @ Google

Fionn Regan dropped into Google today - It was the first time we had a full band in for a gig so was looking forward to getting a good few pics of them doing their thing. Some issues with the light, as Fionn stood just a fraction too far forward for the spotlights to get him which meant his face was in shadow for the entire thing. Adjusting settings to make the most of the low light didn't help that much and I didn't really fancy using the flash at such a close range when he was trying to perform. I got some decent ones of his band though so was happy with that. The performance was really good too!

 

 

  

  

 

John Spillane @ Google

Another @Google session, this time with John Spillane. John was so entertaining I almost forgot to take some pictures, but I grabbed a few toward the end of his set. After the Gemma Hayes and Mick Flannery sessions, I noticed that some other (more experienced) people there came out with much better looking black&white pics.

When I used black&white on my own camera, I ended up with an almost identical shot to when I use standard colour, except the tones were now changed to greyscale. The more experienced guys ended up with shots that seemed to give less shades of grey and a noticable step between light and shadow. I played around with the camera settings for a bit and I think I've managed to get it a bit better.

  

 

Mick Flannery @ Google

The second installment of the musicians@Google series featured Mick Flannery. Being only a short while after the Gemma Hayes session, I went for pretty similar settings so no surprises for guessing that the results were pretty similar too!