By Klaas Guchelaar

Promoting their new album Grey Oceans the sisters Casady, better known as Cocorosie, played to a nicely filled small venue hall in De Oosterpoort. Opening for them was New Yorkbased Post punk / Club outfit Light Asylum. Nice sound, but the light wasn’t very good (however I would soon find out it could be a lot worse)

After the opening act the stage was cleared for the Casady sisters and other bandmembers. They had a pianist/keyboard player with them, a percussionist and a human beatbox. The sound was awesome and the vocals of Sierra and Bianca were amazing, absolutely fantastic. However they ought to have invested a little more into lights as I also quite like to see what I’m listening to and the light was utterly hopeless. So there are hardly any photos to show. I’d love to see Cocorosie again sometime, but I really do hope to actually see them then

New Cool Collective has recently released a new CD called Pachinko in the full Big Band outfit. And last night they ended their tour in the De Oosterpoort venue, small hall as Randy Newman had claimed the larger one, but I can not imagine that concert having been more fun than New Cool Collective and audience had in the smaller hall. The concert was taped for a DVD release (and they let me photograph, these guys rule!) so the light in the hall was absolutely fabulous. The band was swinging and so was the audience. Lots of new material, lots of older material, just about every member of the brass section got their moment in the spotlight and although there were many solo moments the whole concert felt like the band really played as one union.

The songs were great, the band just seems to be getting better every time I see them and their latest CD is incredible so if you ever get the change: go see New Cool Collective big band

In preparation of the races on the TT Circuit of Assen on Sunday May 16, the Superleague Formula held Qualifying sessions and knockout finals on Saturday May 15. A day earlier there were already some practice sessions and a demonstration in the town center of Assen that was well attended.

Photographing these cars (or any for that matter) is a lot different then photographing motorcycles. Motorcycles are a lot more dynamic in corners as to cars. Also the cars a bigger and getting them interestingly on a photo is not that easy. It might work better if you shoot them from the front, but there were lots of gates preventing decent shots from that point. Luckily we were able to get on the top op the hospitality house so I could shoot some cars a little more from above and vary the shots a bit more. I’d like to try again sometime, but I’d like some different angles to shoot from.

But it was great to see these racemonsters racing over the circuit near my hometown. The noise these car make is insane.

On Saturday May 15 the Superleague Formula racing championship would be qualifying, but around those qualifying sessions were held additional races.For me it was a great way to practice photographing racing cars. When we arrived the Dutch Mustang Challenge had just begun. Curiously among the mustangs were also some BMW’s racing. I guess they helped fill up the field as there weren’t that many cars. The best looking Ford Mustang didn’t even race by the way, it was displayed on the middle area, looking awesome

After these races we got on the photo shuttlebus (driven by my dad ) and relocated. It beats walking, I can tell you that. At the new location I was better able to track the cars and shoot them while they were  ‘slowly’ going around the corner. The race that started now was a supercart race. They may look small, but these little buggers go up to 240km/h (150m/h)

The last event I saw was the Dutch Supercar Challenge race. Roaring engines, air-tunnel designed cars and as pit-stops were mandatory, so standing above the pitlane was a fun place to be. Didn’t get many racing images and certainly not many interesting ones, but a view from the pit is -for a change- quite interesting.

Yesterday I decided I’d try my luck with some “studio-work” again. After the model cars I also have some old cameras and I started with a few of these to shoot some images of them. It’s pretty hard to do as long as I don’t have a decent fixed light setup and do everything with remote fired flashes. Also a dedicated background would do wonders and make the makeshift setup I now use obsolete. That’s something I want to do next and I’m working on some ideas for that.

But for now I’ll use what I have. And I shot some images of my old Rolleicord Twin Lens Reflex camera and of my Polaroid SX-70 Landcamera. Both are -in my opinion- truly beautifully crafted cameras, with their own personality.

Shooting some photos of the cameras was a challenge in it’s own right. I wanted to have them shown not to static (no straight up ‘mug-shots’). The Rolleicord being very black, I wanted to have the worn out semi rusted patches shown. The Polaroid is a formidable design and I wanted that to be visible. By placing it flat on the table, it just didn’t work, so I placed some stuff under the camera to have it elevated and placed it at an angle.

Editing afterwards proved difficult also as a lot of dust was visible (white backdrop didn’t help much there and the aperture I shot is shows absolutely every speck of dust on the sensor). So much patching up was needed. Also, the metallic parts of the camera easily blew out when working on a strong white background. And lastly, I was not able to clear out the corners behind the cameras that showed the end of the table and rising of the background. This because the shadows of the cameras (that were higher then the model cars I recently shot) were both on the table as on the background.

However, I am pleased with the results as they are. It’s a learning process and I hope I’ll be able to do better once I figure out how to implement some fixed lights and a better background (or buy a photography table)

It was a busy night on May 6. After seeing a few sons of Angus & Julia Stone in the Oosterpoort venue, I rushed over to the Vera venue for the next gig. Due to this, I missed the Australian opening act The Vegas Kings. I hope the fact that Angus & Julia Stone are also Australian somewhat makes up for this As I entered the venue the Vegas Kings had just finished their set and the stage was prepared for the Texan Garagepunk rockers The Hex Dispensers.

Coming from a singer/songwriter set this was a heck of a change, but it didn’t take long to adjust. The energy just burst from the stage and into the audience. A fantastic set of short, punchy songs that had the audience dancing from the get-go. And the light was once again terrific at Vera, I even got some great shots of the drummer, the one band member usually to play in (nearly) complete darkness. Had a blast

Yesterday Australian singer/songwriter duo Angus & Julia Stone (brother and sister) came to the Oosterpoort venue. They performed in the small hall which had completely sold out. Opening for them was singer/songwriter Ben Howard from England. He played solo and only uses an acoustic guitar. His style reminded me a lot of Xavier Rudd, with whom -I just read- he has just toured, so that might not be so coincidental. An opening act with only an acoustic guitar is a dangerous thing, as it can just as easily drown in a totally not interested audience discussing the days topics, but I was happy to see the whole venue paying attention to Ben. An impressive gig

As Ben only used a seat and the guitar, it took a pretty long time for Angus and Julia to make it to the stage, but when they did, all was right. What a tremendous duo. Their voices are so incredible, even more so when they sing together. The light was a bit of a bother and with the venue sold out, moving around was not much of an option, but I did relocate a bit to try and get some better shots. After the first three songs Ben Howard made a guest appearance to a very appreciative crowd

I wish I could have stayed after that, but there was another gig I had to go to, so after four songs I packed up my gear and headed to that other great venue of Groningen for the Hex Dispensers.

On May 5 we (the Dutch) celebrate our liberation here in the Netherlands. On this day 65 years ago WWII ended for us, though nowadays we celebrate liberation in a broader concept. Part of this celebration is music festivals all over the country with some interesting and well attended versions in Groningen and Zwolle. However as I had other work to do today, I chose to visit the one in my town: Assen. This version is somewhat smaller then it’s neighbours, but three names on the bill were very interesting: Krause, Jelle Paulusma and Sandy Dane. Unfortunately Krause had been cancelled. Apparently the organization had mistaken her  for a DJ instead of the electro/discobeats band that she is. So the cancelled her and the chance to finally see her perform live was shortlived. The other two names however were still on the bill.

Jelle Paulusma, formerly of Daryl-Ann, was a bit of an odd name for the festival, seeing as what kind of bands will draw an audience in Assen what bands won’t. And Paulusma is not one of those names (Assen isn’t well for indie acts that work well for towns like Groningen that have an active students-society). That’s nothing to say about the gig that Jelle Paulusma & Friends gave, because that was fantastic. A nearly completely acoustic concert (with only an electric slide guitar on a few songs), great songs and a great voice made it -at least for me- an absolutely terrific performance, but then I always enjoy the Paulusma gigs. The square was dreadfully void of a crowd and it was so cold…. I was shaking so much I doubt the Image Stabilizer of my lens would be able to correct all of my spasms and by the end of the gig my skin had turned about as blue as my denim jacket

Sandy Dane was originally scheduled right after Paulusma, but as she wasn’t there yet, they switched her gig with that of the band that would originally perform after her. But I was, together with Krause and Paulusma, only interested in Sandy, who’s getting airplay on national radio and seemed interesting to check out. However being as cold as I was, I didn’t look forward to have to wait over an hour and chose to skip it. I’m very sorry Sandy and I promise to come to a gig next time you’re around, but as cold as I was, I just really wanted to go home

If you came here hoping to find scarcely clothed ladies that I photographed, I have to disappoint you; no clothing was used whatsoever. Ah, I see I have your full attention? Great, now as for the model cars that were photographed…

I wanted to test my flashes and try something I saw on Flickr a few days ago. A scale model car that was shot using a reflective underground so it was mirrored in the image. I gave my coffee table a good polish, found a large white board to use as background and set up the flashes. But all didn’t go as easily as I had hoped (then again: it never does, does it?). It took quite a few shots to get the shadows to light up in a way that was acceptable. I would rather have done without them completely but couldn’t do that (at least not yet). The worst with these shots is that it shows absolutely every piece of dust on the sensor of camera. Guess that’s why most of the shots I saw used black as a surrounding colour. The bonus side is that I don’t often get to shoot at apertures of around f/20.0

With a lot of post-editing in Photoshop I got rid of most of the spots, cleared up the background and touched up the car and it’s mirrored image. That too took some work as the mirrored image is easily removed when getting the colours of the car right. Eventually I settled for these four images. I’ll try again soon to get the images even better.

On Wednesday April 28 I got to see Midlake, a band from Texas/USA that came greatly recommended and had a (nearly?) full house at Vera in Groningen. Originally Nicole Atkins was to open for the band, but she couldn’t make it to Europe due to the ash cloud from the Icelandic volcano eruption. Instead Groningen based The Black Atlantic now opened for Midlake during the Dutch gigs (of which this would be the last). However, since the instrumentation of Midlake took so much space on the Vera stage, only half of The Black Atlantic was able to fit on the stage this time. Geert van der Velde and Kim Janssen played a great set that demanded even more attention from the audience due to the quiet sound than they usually do. The lo-fi sound was great, but with a bit to much noise out of the audience the magic was easy to break (didn’t happen too often, luckily)

After a few small changes on stage, all was set for the 7 (!) members of Midlake. It took a bit for the memebers to find their place on stage and around each other, but once they did, the gig went like clockwork. Great songs, fantastic connection with the audience. as it was their last gig in Europe, they give it all they got and that worked wonderfully well and as the evening went along, the gig got better and better. It was a shame I wasn’ able to sta till the very end, but I had to work on the photos and had a daytime job to return to as well. But I’ll definitely go see them again next time they’re around