Audience

I have to give a special thanks to the venue, for letting me in areas normally off limits. Unlike the metal shows I've been to, where the crowd will shift position and allow me in for some shots, Emilie's fans were firmly rooted in one spot, and I couldn't get anywhere near the stage for love nor money.

Fortunately I had my 80-200mm with me and it could do a pretty good job of getting in close. Still had some tall audience members to deal with, but all part of the charm(?) of shooting live.

Now I'm Down In It

This band wasn't the headliner, but put on one heck of an interactive show, singing to the fans, getting them involved, and so forth. I really wanted a front shot of the band and singer, but you can see the crowd here I was working with, so that was pretty much right out. Side shots only for them.

Yup, Still Doing It

I have been dragging my poor girlfriend out to metal shows for photography, and of course the poor thing doesn't like metal, so in an effort to balance things out, I let her pick the next show.

Enter: Pop Punk.

There were a few things different here, one, it was *massively* crowded, standing room only crowded. This city has a much larger affinity for pop punk than it does for metal.

Two, the lighting was better (well, that's a relative term) but it did allow me to shoot at ISO 800, rather than 1600 or 3200.

Three, most of the people at the show were underage girls. I had a difficult time getting anywhere near the stage, so I had to get creative about shooting. Here for example, I was squished in behind (or in front of, depending on your POV) a set of speakers. This is the guitarist from the band Car Party. The music was pleasant, if not my style.

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.

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? ;-)

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!