boyziggy and I headed to Annie's Social Club for a midnight punk rock show, featuring my friend/teacher Steve Kirk playing guitar with The Symptoms. Two other bands played first, and we arrived in time for the last few songs of a very loud all-female group. At the break we escaped to the back room and sang a little "punk rock and schlock karaoke", which was actually pretty much the same as regular karaoke except that I thought the host (female) was a bit cuter than the ones at The Mint. Steve sang "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" and I performed my usual, "Abacab" (still misclassified under Phil Collins rather than Genesis, sigh). Ziggy and I snapped a few pics.Then we headed back to the main stage for Steve's set, where I began figuring out which lenses I was going to use in the very dark hall. I tried a few with my 17-55/2.8, but ultimately used the 50/1.4 for almost all of the set, as there was a good amount of room to maneuver and get both wide and close shots despite the lack of zoom. I ended up using shutter priority mode, set at 1/25 for most of the shots, which was good enough to counter a lot of the motion blur without underexposing too much. ISO was set at 1600, and white balance auto, as I was shooting raw as usual and would correct that, along with the exposure, in post. I took over 400 photos; 55 made the final cut.
I decided to post these on my new trial SmugMug account rather than Flickr. I'm seriously considering event photography as a side business, and SmugMug has more flexibility and features that are useful to pros, such as charging a markup for prints and digital downloads. Plus, the user interface is somewhat nicer than Flickr; for example, you can move between photos simply by using the arrow keys. I'm not abandoning my Flickr account, but I'm pretty sure I will make SmugMug a permanent part of my arsenal before my two-week trial is over.
I actually enjoyed the music too, despite the high volume level; some of the songs were reminiscent of the Talking Heads, and Steve's soloing was very impressive as usual. I look forward to acquiring the album he produced for them once it's released.
During the set I was approached by another photographer, who asked about what camera I was using to take the photos in low light without flash. Turns out he shoots for the Guardian and has a great portfolio online, and is also here on LJ as
mrdodgy. We exchanged cards. I need to make a real business card and a logo now that I have a domain name (site has nothing on it yet so I'm not linking it here).We were lucky enough to catch the all-elusive 27 Bryant bus home at ~1:15 in the morning. I was a bit concerned that if I start doing this for money regularly, my fees would be eaten up in cab fare. That and a lot of other issues are running through my brain as I ponder where I want to go with my photography. The one fact that's indisputable is that I still have quite a lot to learn.
