Happy New Years to All

May the new year be bright and prosperous for all my friends, both past, present and future. To all my readers, thank you for visiting and have a grand time tonight!

On The Plus Side

The drummer was well lit (well, lit compared to the rest of the band) so I was able to get some good pics of the drummer for a change, instead of writing them off as covered in darkness.

Shot with my 50mm, and a new noise reduction technique applied (dark field subtraction) which brings the blacks back to being black, rather than black engulfed with blue, so the impression of sharpness is regained.

Anyone who has to work with high ISO, I urge you to look into dark field subtraction, it's simple to do, and a brilliant concept.

It's All About The Lighting

Lights, or lack thereof. I know it's cool to dim the lights for a metal show, but it makes good concert pics darn near impossible. Lots of conversion to Black and White for these shots, it minimizes noise. I did convince the venue workers to turn on some of the lights for a while, but then they shut them off again, probably expensive to run them, but for a shot period of time, I could see things.

Been Slacking Off

Holidays, work, life, vacation planning, concert going, all these things have conspired to keep me from posting here. 

Well that's my story and I'm sticking to it!

Sometime in Feb of 2013, I'm heading to Belize for a much needed vacation. If I never post here again, it means I didn't come back. Unlikely that'll happen tho, so be on the lookout then for lots of landscape pics. In the meantime, I've been to two local concerts, one metal, one pop-punk (something different for a change)

Aside from the difference in music, the crowds were as different as night and day as well. With the metal show, it's hell's headbangers, and the venue was sparsely populated. With the pop-punk show it was all young girls and packed to standing. I couldn't get within 10 feet of the stage (something I did not expect) so my shots suffered somewhat. I've picked up a longer reach lens for just such occasions, so I'll go better armed next time.

In the meantime, here's a shot from the local metal show, the singer and guitarist for the awesome power metal band, Yesterdays Saints.

Album Names

Didn't Styx have an album named "The Grand Illumination"? Never was into Styx so feel free to correct me if I am wrong.

Taken with my 17-35mm on my Nikon d2x.

The Grand Illumination

Every year around this time, several buildings in the downtown area set up lighted animals and adorn the local trees with lights as well.

Being an Indian Summer style now (we have 75 degrees) it wasn't such a big deal to walk there after work and see if I could take some better pictures than the ones I took of the area last year.

Sunset was at 4.51pm so you will see different colours here, as the sun went down and the artificial lights came into play.

One For The Fans

Somewhat pictured to the left, was the opening band Speedwolf. Super nice guys, and great Motorhead-influenced music. 

In my limited experience the opening act garners virtually no crowd interaction and thus I get the front row area all to myself for work. Not so this time, as you can see some frenetic moshing going on. Heck even some girls got into the stage diving, which was great to see.

Friendly

Here is the guitarist for Napalm Death. Pages could be written about the band, and have been elsewhere, but what I loved most about them, is captured here. They weren't too big to involve the crowd in the show. Here they are letting a fan sing a song, which builds up tremendous goodwill, and I respect them immensely for that.

Back to Monochrome

All red lighting makes for surreal pics, and tends to wash out the details, so, back to conversion. This shot for example, looks so much better in Monochrome (Sepia) than it ever did in colour.

Municipal Waste on stage here.

Local Heros

The reason for the massive crowd was the party metal band "Municipal Waste", seen here. It seems that everyone was waiting for them to hit the stage, and they put on quite the killer show, and encouraged lots of stage diving and moshing, again, making it hard to get the proper shots, so most of them were show from a 3/4 angle. I really need a 200mm lens, anyone wanna chip in on one? ;-)

Something I Don't Normally Do

This was the "mascot" for the death metal band "Exhumed" and this shot is heavily cropped. Shot was way back in the back, he was madly waving around a real gas-powered chainsaw, as you can sort of see here. Later on he came out with a decapitated head and spewed blood into the crowd. I presume it was someone who was caught trying to sneak into the concert, but I didn't get a chance to ask.

A Day Late and Many Dollars Short

Ok, so I've been busy with Holidays and all that happy nonsense, and haven't posted in a bit. Well here you go, still doing the concert work, and I think this is going to be my favourite type of photography for the foreseeable future. The energy given off by a good metal band is hard to match.

Lighting was still dicey at the venue, so lots of conversion to Black and White. And the crowd was highly energetic and packed in like sardines, so that was a new situation I had to contend with. That's ok, you learn something new every day!