Ten years of speakeasy mayhem

The Candlelight Club celebrated its 10th birthday at events on 8th and 9th October. (Technically it’s actually been 11 years since the first party in 2010, but we lost a year to Covid and weren’t able to do our planned birthday bash in October 2020, so we had it now.) We’ve always had a high turnover of guests (rather than a mass of loyal repeat customers) so the majority of people in the room would never have been before and were doubtless wondering what all the fuss was about. In some ways not much has changed—we started in the smaller basement room of the same building before moving up to the current hall we use in February 2011—but in fact we have finessed the experience a lot over the years. We originally had no stage or stage lighting. (We realised we needed a stage when drunken dancers kept falling over the monitors on to the musicians—at least one microphone stand was destroyed that way.) Operating from 7pm till midnight we always knew we had to offer food, but it varied from homemade sandwiches, to a buffet, to street food stalls in the courtyard; nowdays we have table service with a three-course dining option as well as a range of sharing dishes for groups.

I’ve always taken photos, right from the first event, partly as a service to customers and partly to garner promotional images. Taking photographs in a room lit by candles is a challenge and I’ve alternated between between using a flash but finding ways to keep a sense of warmth and intimacy, and using available light. The latter became more viable as I got better cameras, capable of higher ISO, and also when I got a faster lens (a fixed 50mm Sigma ART f/1.4). This time, almost by accident, I experimented with using a wide-angle zoom—leading to the happy discovery that I can make a trombone look ridiculously long (see below).

See the full set on Flickr.

Behold the eight-foot trombone