While the sun has been relentless here in Wales the past few months, it does bring with it some benefits (though I will never again speak ill of how rainy it is here), and at the end of July I had the opportunity of photographing a rooftop jazz evening at Jacob's Roof Garden.

I've photographed a few events here but there's just something about a pleasant breeze, evening sun, and approachable jazz that works so well. The bar and pizza aren't to be sniffed at either.

I've been chopping and changing my gear quite a bit over the past year and this event coincided with a couple of new additions: a Nikon Z8, and a Nikon Z 70-200mm f/2.8 S (the first version). I've finally settled on the Z system as my primary platform for professional photography, as I've tried out pretty much everything else on the market and I don't believe anything suits my work and requirements better than the Nikon Z9. The Z8 is basically just the same camera, albeit one that fits in regular camera bags.

It's been a long time since I've owned a 70-200mm lens and it's something I've been missing greatly. It's both one of my favourite landscape lenses as well as being fantastic for event and portrait work. As much as I'm a fan of prime lenses, the combination of a 24-70mm f/2.8 and 70-200mm f/2.8 is just so convenient when you're working around an event. In this instance I only had the Z8 body with me, and so swapped between the two regularly, but with two bodies it's basically all you need for 90% of the day.

As the majority of these photos will be used for social media and posters, they were primarily shot in the portrait orientation. I don't tend to go too overboard with my photo editing, and in this instance I mostly just leant the photos towards a more filmic palette and pushed the highlights quite bright to reflect the bright sunshine of that evening. I think this style best matches previous coverage of the venue and makes it look even more enticing to new visitors. I love the pop that film palettes bring to colours - modern camera profiles so rarely capture colours in bright sunshine the way I want them out of the box. In this instance the photos were edited in my usual choice of DxO PhotoLab 9 and DxO FilmPack. You can get 15% off any DxO product using the code "ROBERT15", but you can also try them out for free for a limited time.

With a view right over Cardiff Central train station, this location is just such a joy to photograph at. There's very few rooftop venues in Cardiff (I know of only one other, currently) and as the city is still largely quite low-lying you get a great vantage point for the city centre:

As always, I'm available to hire for events, including music, both in Cardiff and further afield.