Kicking it 'Old School'...

Once upon a time I used to get asked to shoot bands in small clubs with no lights/only red lighting gels/instore gigs etc. Thats all well and good, until it comes to trying to correctly expose your shots, or make them look different from every other fanboi/girl there with a happy-snappy digital camera.

It's then I like to pull out my flash and proclaim i'm going to be "kicking it old school tonight".

Excuse me, but what?

Well when I first started out shooting live shows, and didn't have the fast lenses, or the money to buy fast film I used to shoot everything with flash on black and white. Direct on, blown out, sometimes blurry. It didn't matter, because I was there, hearing my favourite bands, living in the moment. Lately i've been very spoilt with the shows i've been shooting, perfect lighting setups, big stages, minimal red lighting. Everything perfect. Boring.

So why the long winded memory trip? Well I got to shoot the boys from Black Chrome the other night in an extremely small club - tiny stage, no lighting except for a projector set up and a couple of red and yellow gels on some crummy old lights. What did i do? I kicked it old school.

Wicked.

See some of my shots of the night here: http://www.parazz.com/html/?username=umbradigital&albumID=65845