You’d think the amount of times I frequent The Jazz Café they would offer me a role as their house photographer!

A man can dream…

Anyways! We return to Camden Town for another Hip-Hop show and I must give credit where credit is due. I got accepted for this show in record time, under an hour of sending the initial E-Mail, I got a DM on Instagram from the man himself. If only we were all that prompt!

That was a couple months ago. On the day I was genuinely close to not even going due to my train line being shut down most of the day! But in a stroke of luck, they got running again right when I needed them to.

I arrived at The Jazz Café right on time for the 1st act: Members of UK Hip-Hop label The RapXChange.

The immediate thought when beginning to shoot was that the lighting was going to make this very hard. Not only was the setup mainly backlit but it was closer to strobe lighting than solid. I was erratic!

It made for an overall set where the success rate in nailing the lighting and focus were super slim.

In between was a small set by a New York artist who I’m trying to get the name of so I can show love so this post isn’t the finished article.

For now we move onto the DJ for the headline in Mr. Len

And then came on the last member of Artifacts, El Da Sensei.

The lighting continued to be a challenge but lucky for me there were two moments were El was talking to the audience which led me to pad things out a bit.

I decided to try monochrome which made editing easier but in the moment was just as challenging.

Big thanks to El Da Sensei for responding personally to me with such speed.

I love Hip-Hop so much.