Aleksi Campagne

Aleksi Campagne

X-mas Unplugged

Ever since moving to Montreal I felt like I had moved into concert photographer's paradise, or bootcamp depending on how you look at it.  It was great having access to all these bands to shoot, but also slightly exhausting.  The night of the 2nd of December was a particularly good example, an acoustic theme event, with 5 bands scheduled to perform.  When I say bands, the sizes varied from duos to 4 piece rock bands.  We also had a pianist performing as part of a duo, to add variety to an already variety packed night.

The bands were great, each of them bringing something different to what was already a musically rich night.  Carrying about the camera can be exhausting after a while, but when you are listening to great music it makes it all worth the while.

In case you want to know what it is like to be me for a few minute, check out Mike Vision:

Friendly Frogs Freak Show

I had just arrived into Montreal and barely finished unpacking when I was given the opportunity to see a live band perform at my local music venue.  The Friendly Frogs Freak Show, which isn’t a band name you forget quickly.  I wanted to get some more information about this curiously named band, asking around the venue I managed to gather that “they rocked” and that they wore full body green morph suits.  A rock band who wear green morph suits?  Yes, I will go and see them.

I approached the band whilst they were setting up and asked them if I could photograph their show, in exchanged I would give them a copy of the photos.  Being a photographer I am always looking for opportunities to photograph things that interest me.  They were very friendly and agreed, saying they could use with some good photos.

After they finished setting up they disappeared off into a changing room and emerged in their signature vivid green frog morph suits.  The green morph suits were just the base of their outfits.  Additional items of clothing included denim dungarees, bright shirts and various hats including my personal favourite, a bright purple fedora.  The sort of clothing you would find rummaging around in a good vintage thrift store.

They definitely seemed psyched for this, bouncing onto the stage with energy, and this energy continued for their whole performance.  There was no vocalist in this band, or not in this performance at least.  Instead they were focused entirely on their instruments, producing a blend of rock, funk and jazz.  The simplest way I could describe their music was that they took the outro of great 80s rock songs, that long drawn out part a rock band would play for as long as possible before finishing a song, and made it their style of music.  I guess you could say it was an evening of 80s outro rock, and it was great.  Underneath the green spandex and purple fedoras were clearly some very talented and passionate musicians.  Four, slightly eccentric friends, wearing green morph suits flexing their musical muscles on stage.

Photographing them was actually surprisingly difficult, as I encountered an unusual problem.  As they were dressed in their full body morph suits, I had no facial features to focus my camera on.  Pretty much all of my clients I have photographed have had faces, if anything having subjects with faces was a luxury I had taken for granted.  I did managed to rattle out a few decent photos, focusing on the small holes they had cut out for their eyes.

If Future Mike told me that the first thing I would be doing in Montreal was photographing a band wearing green morph suits, I would have just laughed and said "yeah, good one future Mike" but here I was, photographing a band wearing green morph suits.  I had ambitious plans to photograph as many bands in Montreal as I could and I guess I set the bar quite high, or rather quite strange.  I wonder what I would find myself photographing next.