The Trimmers Arms

The problem I have with photography work is consistency, There could be weeks on end when I don’t have any work come and so I’m left to my own devices to find something photography related to do in my spare time. Thankfully there has been one thing during the last six month gave me something to do every week. Just before Christmas a few friends of mine decided to take over one of the biggest music venues in South Shields called The Trimmers Arms.

The Trimmers Arms

The Trimmers have always been known in Shields for its great live acts every Friday, Saturday and a few random acts during the weeks. I see to cover a bit work there a few years when one of my friends used to run a buskers night every Thursday night and I would go down to photograph and record some video. When I found out about the news I was excited to see what direction my friends would take the venue in. It was even better when I got asked if I wanted to come down every Saturday night and take photos of the band and some of the punters. I jumped at the chance, because this is kind of thing would keep me focused when I didn’t have much work on.

Initially I wasn’t what kinda of equipment I wanted to bring. I knew the venue would be packed every night there was a band on so I couldn’t carry too much equipment when shootings. I decided to keep it simple, so I just used my mirror less camera with a 50mm 1.4 lens attached. I knew I didn’t want to use flash, so I decided to head down the low-light shooting route.

The first few weeks was quite straight forward, but there some challenges depending on the band I was covering. Some bands would just be lit up by the stage ingots that were already there, but other times the bands would would have there own stage lights would y camera would struggle to pick up and mess up depending on the type of light it was. Eventually though I started to get the settings right nearly every week and I am just about able to handle any low light situation no matter who the band was. 

It’s been nice over the last six months to have something to keep my self focused on my photography. At the moment I’m not too sure how long I’ll be helping on The Trimmers but so far its been just about packed every weekends and there’s no sign of the place slowing down.