With a choir vocal style, Number Nine opened their performance at the Oude Pothuys Café, in Utrecht last night. Number Nine is an aspiring band, established in 2006. So far they have won the Public Prize Award of the Geheim van Babylon (8 December 2007) and the Ijsselpop award (28 December 2007).

Their music is retro, influenced by the Beatles, with simple but enjoyable melody. Natasja den Toom and Ruud Bakker are the main lead singers, well supported with the rest of the band as the back up singers. With a sound singing squad like that, you can definitely expect a solid vocal performance in their show.

In their website, you can find that they usually offer a video show in their concert, but due to the limitation Pothuys has, with the lack of background monitor screen, it was not possible to present their video show last night. But still, I did not regret coming there at 11 o’clock in the middle of a cold and windy night to see their act; this might be a band that could be big in the future.

Oude Pothuys was the first venue I shot my music photography, so I knew in advance that this would be difficult. It is literally an underground basement; you can imagine how the lighting just by knowing that. Thus, it is a perfect time to use the auto ISO. 

I put the exposure metering in manual. In the first two songs, I used 1/80 and 1.4 exposure, until I realised that it was just not enough to freeze the motions of the performers. So I raised the speed around 1/125 to 1/160.

Although it was so dark, with reddish shade of light, sometimes the lighting can be cooperating. In fact in some of the pictures, I could get down to ISO 100! I couldn’t believe it, but I guessed that’s because I used -2 EV (by accident) during the last minutes of their performance. This setting definitely helps to push up your photos, but it also raises the contrast and blackens the background.

This morning, I did merely some mild processing to the photos. I used the cloudy white balance and only adjusted the contrast and brightness. Nothing less and nothing more.