Africa Rising At The Royal Albert Hall

Having travelled to Nigeria and Washington DC to cover the other Africa Rising music and fashion shows it was great to be able to photograph the event relatively calmly so close to home. As things turned out, this event was the best of the lot - the organizers obviously pulled out all stops for this show, which is run to portray the positive side of Africa.
Nigerian media mogul Nduka is the man behind the event and having got Jay Z, Rihanna and Naomi Campbell, amongst others, to take part in Nigeria he was able to secure Christina Aguilera and Seal to perform at the Royal Albert Hall.
The music and fashion shows were a lot of fun to photograph and I was especially pleased with my live Seal pictures. However, the all the acts were upstaged by Colin Powell being dragged up on stage to dance for 10 minutes (second from bottom photo).

Seasick Steve Plays The Royal Albert Hall

There's was more than a hint of surprise in most people's reaction when they heard blues man Seasick Steve was playing the Royal Albert Hall. Especially when you consider the former migrant worker used to travel long distances by hopping freights as a hobo and lived in 56 different houses in the 25 years of marriage with his Norwegian wife.
His break in the UK came when, as an unknown musician, he made his television debut on Jools Holland's 'Annual Hootenanny' BBC TV show, after which his popularity grew extensively. Now, upon releasing his third album, he finds himself performing at the grand, world famous, Royal Albert Hall in his biggest gig to date in the UK.
The Royal Albert Hall is situated in South Kensington, which has come a bit of a second home to me recently, what with London Fashion Week being based here and the two gigs I covered here last week.
And Seasick immediately seemed at home playing to such a large crowd, coming onto stage playing a moving version of 'Amazing Grace'.
I tried out a new body today, the Nikon D300, which I plan to use for gigs because of it's capabilities in low light. It worked fine here, but it'll really come into it's own when the stage lighting is poor.

The Orange RockCorps Concert

This was the first time a RockCorps concert - where the concept is for the audience to volunteer to get their ticket, rather than buy or win one - has been held in the UK following a series of successful concerts in the US. Beforehand all the talk was of whether headliner Busta Rhymes would be able to perform having been detained by British customs who said he was not allowed in the country. However, upon arriving the PR told us he'd been cleared to play this charity concert, which only seemed right from what I know.
Rumours also surfaced that Amy Winehouse would join him on stage, but there no sign of the disturbed soul singer all night. Other acts were a strange mix of hip-hop, soul and rock taking in John Legend, Feeder, The Automatic, The Guillemots, Ludacris and Lethal Bizzle.
I don't think these types of night's work too well - there's many different styles and most of the acts only playing for 3 songs, meaning there ends up with lots waiting time between acts. Picture wise the stage was very back lit, which although looks bright and good, makes it difficult for the camera's metering system to pick up the faces of the acts because it gets confused by the bright lights behind making for more muzzy shots than normal. Still, overall there was enough opportunity to photograph the acts well.

Joe Brown Plays 50th Anniversary Show

I must admit, I didn't know much about Joe Brown before this, but soon read up on him and found he was huge in the UK in the late 50s, early 60s, around the same time Cliff Richard was making his mark.
This being a celebration of his 50th anniversary in the business, he had a number of special guests to bring out, but we had to finish photographing by the time he got the likes of Mark Knopfler and Jools Holland out on stage at the Royal Albert Hall. Brown seemed great with his audience too, spending time between each song to chat and joke away, which the older crowd clearly loved. As the photographers left he looked at us and joked we must be Cliff Richard fans...

Lou Reed Plays The Royal Albert Hall

Very poor light and having to shoot from a one position at the side made this a bit of a disappointing return for what was a legend, playing such a famous venue.

Eric Burdon And War Perform At The Royal Albert Hall

A big turn out of photographers for Eric Burdon's first performance with WAR for almost 40 years. We had to wait 5 tracks before Burdon joined WAR onstage, and were told to neel down at the front of stage so as not to obstruct the view of the audience behind us.
This was not only very uncomfortable, but also meant we couldn't move from the spot we were in to shoot. Luckily Burdon moved around the stage to some degree, but it was still difficult from the angle I was in to get anything other than tight shots of him. Still, with this considered, overall I was quite happy with the results and was really impressed by Burdon's singing voice and WAR's funky and soulful sound. It was definitely one of the finest performances I've seen from an old band, best known for their 70s material.