Bangladeshi Rock Night at Rich Mix
The Rich Mix Cultural Centre in London put on a showcase of some local Bangladeshi rock bands last night and I was on snapping duty. Please have a look at some of the photos on my new gallery entry for the event by clicking here, or keep reading for some more details about the show.
So, despite a tumultuous history and an unstable political environment, Bangladesh has always had a rich musical and cultural heritage. You’re probably most familiar with George Harrison and Ravi Shankar’s Concert for Bangladesh in 1971 (or maybe not), and it was this shindig that paved the way for new (at that time) rockers like Azam Khan who was a liberation fighter in the war against East Pakistan that took place in that same year.
The attitude towards music which Khan and those he influenced is still making waves amongst contemporary rock artists in Bangladesh and the show at Rich Mix showcased a few of the more recent additions to the scene in London:
[box_grey]Photography notes[/box_grey]
I shot this with the D700 and the 24-70mm f2.8 and 50mm f1.4 Nikkor lenses. The stage was VERY dark, with minimal strobe lighting and no fog to accentuate the few coloured lights that were there. This meant that I had to shoot wide open (i.e. at f2.8 and f1.4) and at very high ISO (3200 – 6400, mostly the latter). I was in spot metering mode, continuous AF, with a single focus point which I moved around manually to fit the shot.
You might have noticed that I processed the photos with a slightly faded look. This is very simple to achieve in Lightroom, all I did was use the point tone curve to change the black input levels to grey output levels. Other than that, the colours and white balance are straight from the camera.
Read more tips on concert photography by reading this article.
