Keith Hyett, the incredible classical guitarist

BACKDATED ENTRY August 2010

....And his incredible hands...

West Country Keith was performing on the 4114 Acoustic Stage at the SOLAM Festival, near Chippenham and he is the quiet master of his instrument. He holds and hugs the guitar as if holding a woman in a trance like, hypnotic state. He is at one with it, he becomes it, he IS it.

A very quiet unassuming tall man, his bony hands really become a feature of his performance as much as his music is. It is fair to say that Keith has not enjoyed the most commercial of success, his self written pieces are certainly not for everyone. He would admit that, with a shrug.

Most of the Festival was rock and folk music and I think he fell ill at ease with rather boozy youngsters as his potential audience and he would demand total silence - and no flash either. Which was fine with me as I was shooting with my 70-200mm f2.8 Sigma so the low light was not a problem. As official photographer for the event, I was able to tell the couple from the local paper not to shoot, they only had slow standard lenses and could only use flash.

I got to know Keith a little during the two days of the Festival and even bought him a pint of beer! He used some better images I had taken the previous year for publicity, for free, but which unfortunately have been lost due to a hard drive failure. That is why I now back up everything many times over!

So, tying up some loose ends on my various hard-drives, I came across half a dozen of Keith. I only shot fine jpegs back then as I only had a laptop (five years ago, so little memory) and no money to expand that and for the uses required at the time (internet) the 7-10mb jpegs were fine. Also, my Photoshop skills back then were rudimentary, I'd only been digital just over a year. 

So, I set about re-editing an already edited jpeg - and eventually came up with this. It looks better with a black background, so go LARGE.

Keith sent me a CD, which to be honest, doesn't get played any more (!) not because it's not good, it's just not my type of daily listening but I enjoyed snapping him, seemingly so intimately now and which brings back good memories, of course.  

As far as I know, Keith continues to make a living playing in churches and acoustic events and similar throughout the south west. 

I did find this video of him in 2014 http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1on9pu_14-04-14-electrosonica-at-halo-keith-hyett_music - it takes a minute for him to be introduced, so be patient.