A Night of Blues and a Pack of crisps!

Ok. Yesterday saw the final tour of Blues legend, B.B King in the UK. Now, to get photography accreditation for this gig was going to be a struggle and a half, so I contacted the appropriate people, but nothing came out of that. And that does not suprise me at all. I'm still waiting for a response for accreditation for LIVE 8 London 2005, but no responses. Some people are so rude. Anyway, I had the last laugh. (HAH!) I ended up covering the real Live 8: Africa Calling, at the Eden project, Cornwall.

Anyway, As favour would have it, a fellow photographer asked me to take his place in taking pictures of the B.B King show, and of course, yours truly was going to oblige. And what a show! It started off with support from Gary Moore.
The lighting wasn't that great, but if you can take shots at Ronnie Scotts Jazz Club, then this was a walk in the park. All the photographers in the pit could only shoot 2 songs (managerial stipulation), so every shot counts. Some punk, I have no idea but it got security riled up, started shooting before we were allowed to start. It's inconsideration like that that spoils it for the rest of us. I managed to get a couple of shots before we were chucked out.

Now, as a rule, I normally pack a bottle of water or sweets in my bag for every gig I go on. This time around, I completely forgot. So, while waiting for us to cover Mr King's act, I wondered off to buy a Snickers bar. Got to the foyer, but was told that there were no snickers but tubs of maltesers. I didn't feel like having maltesers, and I knew that you'd have to pay premium for chocolate, so I opted for a bag of simple Walkers crisps. By this time a queue was forming behind me, so when the cashier told me that the pack of crisp would cost £1, I had already committed my hand to pocket to pay. Now, call me Ebenezer Scrooge or an Ijebu for all I care, but £1 for a bag of crisps???? And the flaming pack is never full. Ooh, don't go all 'Holy than thou' on me when it comes to such things: Let He/she without sin cast the first stone. "Cast it!!"
Forty minutes later (and eating every crumb from that bag of crisp!), we were called in to take shots of the 3rd & 4th song of B.B. King. And what a show!! And get this: The lighting was AMAZING! I rarely get to say that whenever shooting gigs, so when you take pictures with sufficient lighting and balancing between 1/125th-250th of a sec at an aperture setting of F2.8 or over, then xmas has come early. The lighting was so good that you could have taken a bite out of all that goodness!!

And here's a shot of the man from the night:

All Images copyrighted to Akin Aworan (Except the Walkers Crisps, which reluctantly came courtesy of Pepsico Products!)