Todays Shoot - Alkaline Trio - Dear & Departed - Cursive (Live)

Today I got to see an old friend of mine, Dan Smith, who, when I first met him, was in a new zealand based hardcore band called Day of Contempt. Back in those days we ended up doing a few photo shoots (some of which are in my book "Bring The Noise" - and thats also how I met Lisa Marx, who I work with often.

Now a days, Dan is well known for being a TV STAR! on LA INK! holy shit! how crazy is it to see your bud getting all huge on tv? so crazy!

Anyway, the main reason I went to this show, was to see him for a bit, and to check out his new band, which I thought I had seen before, but I hadn't

The lighting was pretty cool, lots of pinks and greens all night. At first the front lighting was actually a bit stronger then the back lighting, but during the first band (which was dear and departed) Dan had them turn down the brights, which made the lighting much better, unfortunately it was after I had finished the alloted first three songs.

I used a fill flash on some of the shots and turned it off in otheres - here are a few shots from Dear&Departed







































After The Dear & Departed - the band cursive was up, who were a bit more energetic but seemed to stay in place much more, the lighting used more reds for their set. - i dropped my speed down to a 10th to get a decent amount of movement - generally at the webster im at a 15th or 20th


























next up was Alkaline Trio - whos lighting was incredible - i had to jump my speed up to a 20th for these shots because they had really stong back lit colors and very strong front lit whites (which is exactly what you want for really good lighting at a live show.)

They had their logo huuuge on the backdrop and actually had good lighting on it, with no smoke machine, so i did a bunch of shots where you could really see the logo in placement, and I also wanted to get some shots of all three members at the same time which was somewhat difficult as the two up front were very often on the opposite sides of the stage... so i snagged my fisheye - dropped my fstop to 8 or so - and got a few solid shots of the entire group (which is only three of them, so not too too terrible) anyway, here they are...