Podarimo Srečo 2022 brought Slovenian musicians, pupils and an audience together in Murska Sobota on 22 December 2022. The concert was held in the sports hall of OŠ III Murska Sobota and raised funds toward a vehicle adapted for pupils with mobility impairments at OŠ IV Murska Sobota.

I photographed the performers from the changing edge of the stage light: blue washes, hard green beams, dark backgrounds and brief expressions that disappeared as soon as a song moved on. This page is the complete surviving gallery attached to my original article — 21 unique photographs, with no substitute images added later.

The old version of the page displayed 22 images but only 21 files, because the Il Divji photograph appeared twice. It now appears once, at the top.

Podarimo Srečo 2022: event details

DetailInformation
EventPodarimo Srečo 2022 (“Give Happiness”)
DateThursday, 22 December 2022
Time18:00
VenueSports hall of OŠ III Murska Sobota
CityMurska Sobota, Slovenia
OrganisersArt Music Records and the OŠ IV Murska Sobota collective
Charity purposeRaising funds for a vehicle adapted for pupils with mobility impairments
Article published30 December 2022
Photographs in this archive21 unique files

The concert included Nika Zorjan, BQL, Isaac Palma, Emkej, Il Divji, Mia Guček, Ansambel Aktual, Žan Videc, Nina Lampret, Vita Renko and pupils of OŠ IV Murska Sobota. The gallery below does not represent every appearance equally; it reflects the files that remain with this article.

The story behind the concert

Podarimo Srečo was more than an end-of-year music programme. The 2022 edition connected a clear practical need with a public evening: helping fund an adapted vehicle that could support the mobility of pupils with disabilities.

That purpose changed the meaning of the stage. Professional performers drew an audience, but the pupils were not a footnote to someone else’s concert. Contemporary reports described the schoolchildren as the stars of the evening, surrounded by musical guests who had agreed to support the cause.

The venue never quite disappears in the photographs, either. Along the front of the stage in the wider frames you can see coloured foam gymnastics blocks pushed into a heap and covered with a sheet — red, green and blue wedges from the school’s PE equipment, waiting out the concert. A truss, a lighting rig and a proper PA had been carried into a room that spends the rest of the year as a gym.

The fundraising instructions and ticket prices belonged to December 2022 and are no longer reproduced here. This is now a historical photo story, not a live donation appeal. Anyone seeking to support the school today should use its current official channels rather than an expired account reference or SMS keyword.

Mia Guček

Mia Guček singing into a handheld microphone, lit from behind by a hard green light at Podarimo Srečo 2022
A hard green backlight catches the edge of her hair and one sleeve, and the rest of the hall falls away into black.
Vertical portrait of Mia Guček in a brown dress with a guitarist behind her, green light and haze
The vertical frame keeps the guitarist and his burgundy electric in shot behind her, with the haze picking up the green beam.
Mia Guček singing with a guitarist and an effects rack behind her, a large out-of-focus light in the foreground
Shot past a stage light in the foreground, which dissolves into a soft disc at the bottom of the frame.
Mia Guček under blue stage lighting, with LED wash fixtures visible above her
Later in the set the rig turned blue. Same singer, same dress, entirely different photograph.

Photographing one performer across several frames is not simply a matter of holding the shutter. I watch how posture, light and expression change through the song. A wider horizontal image records more of the event; a vertical portrait allows the performer to fill the frame and reduces distractions at the sides.

Nika Zorjan

Nika Zorjan in a black sequinned dress reaching out with one arm, green rim light, two guitarists behind her
A wide frame with the band in it: two guitarists behind her and a rack of spare instruments along the back of the stage.
Vertical portrait of Nika Zorjan with a green light bursting into a star directly behind her
The backlight bursts into a star just above her shoulder. Pointing a lens straight into a fixture like that is usually a mistake — here it gave the frame its centre.
Nika Zorjan holding the microphone out to one side, a green starburst directly behind her head
A moment later the same light sits directly behind her head, and the beams rake down through the haze on either side.

Stage lighting can turn skin, clothing and the background into very different colours within seconds. I do not try to neutralise every frame until the concert looks as though it happened in daylight. The coloured light is part of the performance; the edit only needs to keep faces and expressions readable.

Nina Lampret

Nina Lampret in a gold sequinned top and black leather skirt, singing with one hand extended, blue haze behind
Gold sequins against a blue wash — a warm subject on a cold background, which is the easiest kind of separation a stage can hand you.
Nina Lampret singing with a guitarist in a dark suit behind her and LED fixtures overhead
A second frame from the same song, with the guitarist and his Stratocaster sharing the width of the picture.
Nina Lampret close to the microphone in blue stage light in the OŠ III sports hall
Closer and quieter, with the blue reduced almost to a single glow behind her.

The cleanest concert photograph is not always the frame with the largest gesture. A quieter expression can hold attention because it gives the viewer a pause between brighter and more crowded scenes.

Žan Videc

Wide view of Žan Videc alone on stage with an acoustic guitar, drum kit and keyboard behind him, foam gym blocks in the foreground
The whole stage: one man, one acoustic guitar, a drum kit and a red keyboard waiting behind him — and the school’s coloured foam blocks stacked in front of the stage.
Close frame of Žan Videc singing hard into a microphone on a stand while playing an acoustic guitar
The dark background lets the face and microphone lead, with only a faint blue-green edge on his shoulder.
Žan Videc alone on stage with green beams cutting through haze above him and a blue wash behind
Green beams cut down through the haze while the wall behind him stays blue — two colours doing completely different jobs in one frame.
Žan Videc singing with his head thrown back, a green spotlight above him
Head back, eyes shut, mid-line. This is the frame the other six exist to find.
Vertical portrait of Žan Videc singing with his eyes closed, fretting high on the guitar neck, blue light behind
A closer vertical portrait. The grain is visible here — the price of a shutter speed fast enough to keep his hands sharp.
Žan Videc singing with his mouth wide open, playing a natural-wood Taylor acoustic guitar under blue light
Blue rim light along his shoulder and hair, and the Taylor headstock clearly readable at the right of the frame.
Low-angle frame of Žan Videc singing with his head tilted back under blue and green concert lights
From lower down, so the lighting bar and the dark ceiling of the hall become the background.

Seven photographs allow the rhythm of one performance to appear: changes in light, expression, framing and distance. I keep them together because the gallery is an event record, not a competition to select one technically perfect portrait.

BQL

The two singers of BQL performing side by side, one in a black velvet shirt and one in a bright blue blazer, with a drummer behind them
Both singers in one frame — black velvet on the left, a bright blue blazer and a raised hand on the right, the drummer between them.
A BQL singer performing above rows of out-of-focus heads in the audience at Podarimo Srečo 2022
The only frame in this gallery that turns round to include the audience: rows of heads in the dark foreground, and the singer lit green above them. It is a reminder that the hall was full.
Vertical portrait of a BQL singer holding a microphone, his bandmate in a blue blazer out of focus behind him
Shallow focus separates the two: one sharp and close, the other blurred into the blue behind him.

BQL appeared in contemporary reports from the concert and in three photographs attached to my article, although the duo was missing from the original page’s opening list. The updated archive corrects that mismatch.

How I approach concert photography

The practical challenge in a school sports hall is not only low light. It is inconsistent light. A performer can move from blue to green to near darkness while the background stays busy and the audience remains close.

I work around a few priorities:

  1. Protect the expression. A technically sharp frame without a meaningful moment is still weak.
  2. Keep shutter speed useful. Musicians move even when they appear to be standing still; hands and faces reveal motion first.
  3. Accept higher ISO when necessary. Motion blur cannot be removed by noise reduction.
  4. Watch the microphone. It can hide a face or become an important diagonal, depending on timing.
  5. Use stage colour selectively. Coloured light belongs to the scene, but skin should retain enough tonal separation to read.
  6. Make horizontal and vertical frames. Event stories need different shapes for galleries, covers and portraits.
  7. Edit as a set. Individual photographs can tolerate variation, but the gallery should still feel like one evening.

The backlight is the whole problem — and the whole opportunity

Almost every frame here is lit from behind. That is normal for a concert rig and it is why so many concert photographs fail: the meter reads a bright light, the face goes dark, and the result is a silhouette with a microphone.

The compensation is to expose for the performer and accept that the fixtures will clip. In two of the Nika Zorjan frames the backlight blows out completely and spreads into a star, which is what a bright point source does when the lens is stopped down enough. It is the same optical effect I describe in my guide to aperture and f-stops, arriving uninvited rather than by design.

The other half of the problem is shutter speed. A singer holding a note still moves; a guitarist’s right hand never stops. Where I let the shutter drop too far, the hands go soft first, long before anything else does.

A note on this archive

The photographs are the reason this page exists. I have kept the accompanying text focused on the event rather than padding the gallery with generic biographies copied from elsewhere.

Podarimo Srečo 2022 happened on one December evening, for one specific fundraising goal. The concert ended, the ticket sale ended and its donation instructions expired. What remains here is the visual record: performers lending their presence, pupils at the centre of the cause, foam gym blocks pushed aside for one night, and a hall gathering around a practical act of support.