Mark Greenmantle Photography

Wolfmother are back, with Andrew Stockdale fronting a bigger new line-up of band members, lots of new music and a lot more energy.
I enjoyed the chance to cover their first live gig on Friday night and the energy there was astounding. The atmosphere was intense, with a very excited crowd of 300 packing out the intimate sized Valley studios. The heat was on (and that could also refer to the air-con struggling with the temperature) and Wolfmother delivered a vibrant return that is bound to please. I’m no music writer so I’ll say the rest with pictures.

There are many more shots uploaded to http://greenmantle.biz/wolfmother and the shots are going to be on the Wolfmother site in the next week or two. =)

Midnight has just hit and I am about to go and catch a half decent sleep before diving back into a week of fashion photography and night time processing.

So, with the need for sleep weighing heavily I will keep this brief, Thursday night was the kick off of the Queensland tour of The Armada, led by Jeff Martin (former front man of The Tea Party). I drove from work at North Lakes down to Coolangatta in heavy rain (and with very confusing Google map directions) and shot some backstage fun, and the whole gig (which was so good, I will have to make another post later just to detail why I feel my loss of hearing and ringing ears are so worth it still on a Sunday night) before getting myself home in similar conditions by about 2am.

After work on Friday I only had to make my way to the Guild Bar at QUT where The Armada played in sweltering conditions and I mostly stuck to shooting just the show as we were all hot, sweaty and not enjoying technical hassles at the venue. After working with The Armada I drove into the Valley to shoot my usual social pics atClub Blink and stuck around till closing as usual.

Saturday night things at QUT just gelled perfectly, the lads had been doing hours and hours of soundchecks to fix the previous nights tech hassles and the audio quality was exceptional. I shot a fair number of pics backstage, as the band and the other performers were far more relaxed and it was just a little cooler than it had been on Friday. All up, on Saturday night after covering the gig, snapping some socials of regulars from previous Jeff Martin gigs hanging with the band and then covering socials again at 299′s Club Trash, I’d snapped about 2200 images.

Over the last four days I have shot over 4000 images for The Armada, most of which are quite usable, proving the Nikon D3 defies the usual hit and miss hassles endured by most gig photographers. Being able to shoot at ISO6400 while not stressing about noise is just brilliant.  The only issue now is that I still have 3400 images left to process, most of them being in Nikon NEF RAW format.

I’ll trawl through them for the best of the best shots and will post up sometime through the week.  =)

Last week I shot with Violet Vex, a roller derby skater who also teaches rock climbing and does contortion shows. She’s a gorgeous rockin chic and I am sure we’ll be working a lot in the near future. =)

A quick breath before the great plunge.
So much to get sorted in such a short time and after a day of fighting with the pc’s here and at my business partner’s home, I just want to chill and take time out. Mais il ne doit pas être! No chance, Friday will be retouching/deep etching fifteen shots I captured yesterday for Bankwest, sorting out what the malware on this beast pc is, buying a new HDD and installing that before returning Khrys’s WD640GB with fresh tunes and a big thanks, then wrapped up with *hopefully* a shoot with the gorgeous Imogen Green. I would love for anyone who has heard of couples due to be married and looking for photographers to contact me. My calendar is wide open after the Abbey and call me odd but I do enjoy that kind of work!

*edit* Imogen’s shoot is off due to lack of sleep last night for all parties, which never makes for relaxed times in the studio.
and… I just had an email regarding my first sale of photos from the History Alive event as well. The owner of the World War Two German Half Track (shown below) wants a print. I hope he doesn’t mind the use of the DX lens on the D3!

The image below is the old Queensland Museum taken with the Nikon D3, hand held half an hour after sunset. Available as prints on request.