Moar Band photography

I got invited to this show for a band called Harsh Reality by one of their members. The show was at a place called District 202, a gathering place/hangout for GLBT youth. I tried out my new speedlites for the first time in a live band shooting situation. After fiddling a bit and finding my look, it came out pretty good. I was able to take photos at ISO 800 just like when I brought out the studio strobes at the Terminal Bar, only this time I didn't need to run them off wall current and worry about where to run cords. I was also able to use auto flash exposure rather than run them at a constant brightness, which was helpful because some areas of the stage were much closer to the flashes than the others and it would have been impossible to find a manual solution that didn't completely burn some areas but leave others in total darkness. I was even able to use the A and B slave groups with the ratio feature to dial in different looks without having to fiddle with the flashes themselves.

My only issue was that since the trigger works on infrared and requires line of sight, the triggering wasn't very reliable. I might have to get one of those Radiopoppers when they come out.

I can wait to try this out at bigger venues with better stage lighting... I never really wanted to blow away the ambient completely, but these dark venues leave me very little choice. You can see a bit of ambient peeking through in these photos, but if you look at the real venue these pictures look nothing at all like it. If I were at some place like the Fine Line, I could probably shoot more for the ambient and just use the speedlites to enhance the stage lighting by bringing up the key level while leaving the character of the ambient intact. I could also probably get away with shooting ISO 400.

In other news, I've had a rather exciting development in my life that I don't feel like sharing to the world at large quite yet, but can share with my friends... Ask me about it if you don't know.

This six-pack is starting to turn into a keg

The size of my gut has been really starting to bother me, so I'm committing to exercise more. I promise, as soon as I finish this blog. I promise. And taking pictures of myself on the treadmill to post on the blog. I promise.

New flashes!

So my entire extended family knows by know that I'm a photo geek, so for christmas the gift cards for B&H photo came pouring in... With the money I got myself a flash kit. Two of Canon's high-end camera flashes and an infrared trigger. High-end basically means stuff like having enough power to use as fill flash in broad daylight, automatic flash power, being able to swivel the heads around to bounce light off the walls, etc.
The infrared trigger lets me use them off the camera and still use their automatic features, otherwise I can use a radio trigger for more distance, but at the expense of having to set them manually.

When I got the kit I was a little disappointed to find out that the infrared trigger didn't come with the special battery it needed. I'll have to stop by Batteries Plus and grab one. Of course, I didn't let something like that stop me for long:



That's right. 4 AA batteries bound with electrical tape and wired in series for the required 6 volts, positioned so they are powering the contacts in the unit. Genius? Insanity? Both? You be the judge.

With that out of the way I played around with using the flashes themselves:



I think I'm gonna like them, or something.

Apartment hunting

Kinsey and I are now officially apartment hunting. 2br, 1.5-2 bath, less than 1k, and within the area enclosed by 35W, 100, 494 and 694. Can we do it? We'll see.

Camera package has been negotiated down to $25k, and Kinsey promises to throw camera gigs my way. The main reason he's selling the camera is because he's focusing on stills instead of video, not because he can't get video gigs, so I'm thinking it'll work out money-wise.

Today is a lazy day

Exactly one thing happened today. A Dell service tech stopped by to replace my laptop keyboard because the right arrow keycap snapped off. This probably cost Dell about a hundred times what it would have cost to just mail me a new keycap. Large corporations never cease to astound me.

My friend offered to sell me his broadcast camcorder package for $30k, which sounds like a lot but it's actually pretty cheap for a broadcast camcorder package. Yes, those cameras you see people running around with on the news cost more than your car. The lenses they shoot sporting events with cost more than your house.

Anyway, I'm debating getting it. The main point is will I be able to get enough work as a video photographer to pay for it. We'll have to see.

Happy new year, plus some older photos

Had a new years party over at Charles' place:



Click on it to see the others.

And on the same memory card I found some pics I'd forgotten I'd taken up at my parents' cabin in Wisconsin, so I posted those too:



Again click to see the others.

I'm a bit bored lately because my job hasn't sent me anywhere in a while... Last plane trip was San Diego a couple weeks ago, and I made a day trip to St. Cloud about a week ago but that's it. Sometime maybe late this week or early next I'm going back to St. Cloud because the machine I just fixed a week ago decided to break again. They've got a backup unit up there so it's not a big rush, but I'm still a little peeved that it broke again in less than a week. Whenever I hear about a problem with an installation I worked on I take it kinda personally, like my work wasn't good enough or something. Since I'm the new guy there it's always on the back of my mind that they could decide they don't like my work and I'll lose this incredibly awesome job that I've loved more than any other job I've had.

The new Stellar Vector lineup is getting things together. I'm throwing away a lot of the original parts and writing my own because trying to play someone else's style is difficult for me, especially when I'm having to do it to a click. I like my new parts better though, and Charles and Jonathan seem to as well. I feel a little bit like I'm doing the same thing on drums that Dan did on guitar when he joined up... We both definitely brought more of ourselves into it rather than just try and copy what the last guy did, and I think in both cases it definitely adds to the sound. Mike is having a bit of trouble learning some of his parts. He has to double up on a lot of synth lines and he's never been good at learning riffs by ear, he's better at going off tabulature. I'm sure he'll get it all soon though.

I has a blog

It's got bloggy things on it.