This year I was hired by the creative agency Supple Fox, who are responsible for a lot of the programming of Hobart's Dark Mofo festival. I've shot Dark Mofo for the previous two years, but this was my first time doing it for a paying client which was a little daunting but overall pretty exciting.
Unlike other Dark Mofos where I had free rein to shoot whatever I liked, this year my task was more focused, and centered around one event - Blacklist (though I still found time to shoot a few other aspects of the festival).
Blacklist was this year's Dark Mofo afterparty, an event that in previous years was called Dark Faux Mo, and had a somewhat different feel. Faux Mos of years gone by had a strong exploratory aspect to them. They were often relatively cramped and crowded (in a good way) with various performances and surprises taking place simultaneously across the sprawling venue. In contrast, the entertainment at Blacklist all took place in one spacious location, which certainly made things easier to shoot.
However, true to it's name and the name of the festival itself, Blacklist was rather dark and thus extremely difficult to shoot. Much of the venue was also drenched in red - Dark Mofo's signature colour, and a photographers worst nightmare. High ISOs, low apertures and borderline slow shutterspeeds were the name of the game, and despite the unavoidable grain, and some intense colour saturation in many of my photos, I'm relatively pleased with the results!