For the last six or so months myself and a team of friends have been working hard to realize an idea that has been brewing for a few years. We have all been attending festivals, live music events, electronic dance parties and events at art galleries for years and we wanted to get more involved in our local electronic music scene and create another platform for up and coming artists to share their work while staying committed to bringing world class musical talent to Calgary. All of our crew have been helped out and given opportunities to further our careers in the arts by more established musicians, photographers, radio hosts, visual artists and community event facilitators and we very much would like to give back to a community that has given us so much.
The product of many hours of brainstorming, planning, building, number crunching and an endless stream of hard work by some really incredible human beings is Philosonic. We threw our first event at Calgary’s National Music Centre on Friday April 3rd bringing gifted producer and space alien Bleep Bloop to Calgary alongside the young up and coming talent from Vancouver Perkulat0r with support from local Calgary talents Maseray and Jnana. We also had local wildly talented paint slinger Andreas Tiedemann live painting alongside Kamloops artist Nathan Skyers.
With a stage made of all recycled materials masterfully organized by our head of visual environments Kendra and put together by manual labour and teamwork, the night had an overwhelming feel of a festival which is something we were definitely trying to achieve.
Big cities are rife with nights spent in clubs and something that is very unique about Calgary’s music scene is that we have several crews who are pushing the use of underground venues to promote that special festival community vibe. This has been something that has been important to us from the first brainstorm session we had.
The night was a massive success beyond what we had ever hoped for which means we are onwards and upwards from here. In between managing our volunteers, ensuring everything was running smoothly and running around the venue all evening I managed to shoot a few photos to show off everything we have been building up. We also managed to collect quite a few cash and item donations for the Calgary Emergency Women’s Shelter. We are excited to collect donations for different charities at each of our events and are really excited about the response from the community in terms of donating.
So much gratitude for all the support shown to us by the Calgary community for our first event. Thank you for believing in us. Thanks so much to the Philosonic crew as well. It’s an honour to be involved with such talented, driven and positive people. We have so many plans for the future and we can’t wait to keep sharing. Our success belongs to not a single person but to the Calgary community and a vast network of people who are willing to support grassroots movements in our city. On to the next we say!
Photographic Process
If you’re wondering about my process and settings for event photography I’ll post them here if you’re trying to learn yourself. Sometimes I choose not to shoot with a flash however on this night it just felt right to do so. I shot with a Canon 6D full frame with the Canon 17-40mm f/4L with a Canon speedlite 430ex. I love playing with shutter drag and so typically when I’m shooting with my flash I will set a low ISO of 200 or 400, an aperture setting anywhere between 5-11 depending on how I’m feeling about a certain shot and then I will set a super low shutter speed ranging from 1/4 seconds to 0.8 seconds. I pop the flash at the start of the shot and then drag my camera to create light trails.
