Let me tell you a secret… when I’m shooting action in low light situations — like, say, a punk band with two leads who frantically pogo around the dance floor, sometimes I’ll just set the camera on Automatic, hold the trigger down, and hope for the best. Sometimes I’ll get a single decent photo out of twenty shots but, hey, at least I got the decent usable shot.
But, of those twenty shots, the nineteen that end up like this (l) are frustrating, because the composition is usually pretty good, there’s something actually in focus in the photo, but the main subject is moving at Punk Speed… a speed, which, unfortunately, my camera setup is not able to capture. Most of the time, like 90% of the time, I’m shooting Events with my 18mm-55mm lens, which means I tend to be very very very close to the action, but because I don’t have a fancy super-funky large lens with an aperture of f2.8 or lower, everything I shoot has to be extremely well-lit or not moving too fast.
Those fancy super-funky large lenses, the kind you see on TV at sporting Events or at news conferences, are really really super expensive. So I work my little 18mm lens with its much sloooooooower f3.8 aperture pretty hard to get a few shots in focus… the ‘aperture’ settings kind of work like your pupil, the darker it gets the wider your pupil needs to be to see around you. The lower the f-stop, the bigger the pupil. Kind of [explained here]. Waaaaaaay back in College, I used to have an 18mm standalone lens with a f2.8 aperture for my Pentax K1000 SLR, but I sold it to Doug for $40 so I could feed myself for another couple of weeks… mmmmmmmmm, $0.10 ramen noodles, chocolate milk and $1 packages of soft cookies.
…all that to say, I was surprised to find that someone had turned the lights way up at the Windsor Tavern [here] for their latest Wednesday Wednesday-night concert — this time featuring Audio Visceral [here], Prospect Nelson [here], Canmore Alberta’s Seth Anderson [here] and, all the way from Colorado, SPELLS [here]. I was so looking forward to finally being able to get some really great shots but, unfortunately for me, the bright light had to be turned down after the first band because it was blinding the performers… truly a bunch of prima donnas.
Other than having to use my flash a few times because it was just too dark away from the stage lights, the concert was awesome. I’ve seen Audio Visceral about a dozen times now, and they’re always excellent. This was the second time in a few weeks that I’ve seen Prospect Nelson, and I’m really surprised I haven’t seen the Hawkesbury hard-rock / punk band more often, but the stars of the show were Seth Anderson, and SPELLS. I definitely don’t want this to turn into a Concert Review, but Seth performed a wonderful acoustic set, and SPELLS… well, I bought their T-shirt because they’re just so cool.
…anyway, to see photos from another incredible punk show at Vankleek Hill’s Windsor Tavern, just click on the first picture to get the carousel going — remember, comments are definitely welcome, and they’re now almost entirely free to make, so why not just do it?
Vankleek Hill Photos 