Jet @ Memorial Drive, October ’10

Last month I shot Jet for the first time as they opened for Powderfinger.

Their set that night was good, however this time around, for the second two sold-out Powderfinger shows, Jet seemed to have notched up a gear.

Heavier hitting tracks made up the bulk of their set tonight, and a more jovial stage presence undoubtably won them a bunch of new fans.

Photographically, this set for me was a step up from my last set. I already knew what the lighting would be, but given an extra song to shoot (first 4 songs, instead of the regular 3) I was a lot more relaxed and could focus more on framing than anything else.

So relaxed was I that after the third song, ironically I had got what I needed and was putting my gear away when I noticed Nic Cester (vocals) motioning for me to hand my camera to him. It took me less than 2 seconds to get my camera back out, remove the lens cap and reach up to the stage and hand it over. Nic then took a bunch of shots of the 10,000+ crowd from up on stage, telling them they would be on the cover of “some paper, somewhere tomorrow“.

Now, anyone that knows me, knows I’m always keen to network, network, network and what better opportunity than direct to the frontman of a band!! So, as he was snapping away, (while another photog might be watching their camera intently making sure nothing goes wrong), I was busy in my bag digging out some business cards.

As Nic lent over the stage to hand my camera back, I handed him my cards. He took them, looked at me and nodded a smile of approval.

Nic, if you’re reading this, the shots you took aren’t too bad at all mate! It looks like you knew what you were doing too, as my 5D was set to Manual mode!

I’ve included one of the shots as the last in this set. For the record the other 3 shots were panoramas of the entire stadium.