Musichall 013

Canon 5Ds | EF 15mm fish eye | 16 photos | 1/4 - f/5.6 - iso 800

In the summer of 2015, the 013 music venue in Tilburg underwent a major renovation. The entire complex was given a makeover. The capacity of the smaller hall was doubled, and the main hall also received a thorough refurbishment. Whereas it had previously accommodated 2,000 people, moving the stage further back increased its capacity to as many as 3,000, allowing even more people to enjoy a great night of live music.

The renovation gave the venue a fresh boost, making it possible to bring some bigger bands back to its stage.

013 has been located in Tilburg city centre since 1998 and was created through the merger of the renowned Noorderlicht and the Batcave. It is the largest dedicated pop music venue in the Netherlands. Although venues such as AFAS Live in Amsterdam and Ahoy in Rotterdam can host concerts for much larger audiences, they are not dedicated pop venues in quite the same sense, as they do not routinely organise their own music programmes and provide their own technical production.

Although it may not be immediately obvious from the photograph, the lighting was far from ideal. There was no concert-style lighting of the kind you would normally expect at a live show, but the regular lighting was not particularly bright either. I opted for a relatively wide aperture of f/5.6 and, to keep noise under control, limited the ISO to 800. This resulted in a shutter speed of 1/4 of a second, which is quite slow.

As a result, there is a fair amount of motion blur among the people working in the venue.