http://digitalnoisephoto.photoshelter.com/

This will allow me to easily post up batches of photos from concerts, events, and other shoots to make available for print purchases, and rights-managed commercial licensing.  It’s definitely not a polished site yet, as I’m still going through the PhotoShelter customization options, and tweaking things here and there, but the photos will be up and purchasable.

If I’ve done a shoot for you and it’s not up here and you would like to purchase prints, let me know and I’ll get them posted for you.

Saturday, October 1st 2011, Crest Theater:  Hella Metal Fest 2011 (Facebook Event page).  You.  Will.  Go.

Richard Kokoletsos of the band Memento Mori has been busy organizing one hell of a local metal festival.  A few months ago when the festival was announced in its formative stages, I expressed that I wanted to take part of the event somehow.  We worked out an arrangement, and I’ll be shooting the show in its entirety as an event sponsor (check the flyer!)

Tickets:
$12 presale/$15 at the door

Here’s the roster for the show at this point:
A Holy Ghost Revival
…Amongst the Undead
At the Crossroads
Jack Ketch
Journal
Memento Mori
Nightmare in the Twilight
Out for Blood.
Taunis Year One
The Antioch Synopsis
The Kennedy Veil
The Soothing Sound of Flight

The sponsors are:
LoveinColor
digitalnoise|photo (yours truly!)
Rebel Pyro Management
SubMerge Magazine

This show is going to be a doozy, if you’re into metal and some great live bands, you cannot beat this bill.  Add this to your calendar, say Yes to the Facebook Event page, whatever you have to do, come out to this show and say hi.  This will be an epic night of face-melting metal, so don’t miss it!

Two Fridays ago I went out to Downtown Sacramento’s Concerts In The Park on assignment to shoot Agent Ribbons for their welcome-back show.  Agent Ribbons was a Sacramento favorite before they relocated to Austin, TX–a very fitting locale for this band.

The opening act of the show was a brother and sister duo, The Dreaded Diamond.  Juli on keys/vocals and Tyler on drums.  As they started playing, I started shooting; it’s been ages since I’ve shot at Cesar Chavez Park, so it took me a while to get dialed in.  But the whole while I kept thinking “These two are really, really good!”  Not normally a style I’m down for, The Dreaded Diamond definitely took me by surprise, and I enjoyed the set so much that when after the show Tyler popped up through the crowd and appeared in front of me, demos in hand, I instinctively whipped out a fiver and bought one.  Money well spent.

The rest of the show was equally great, and more photos of the show will trickle out slowly.  As I said, this was on assignment, and once that magazine is published, I’ll upload more, but until then, the flow will be restricted a bit.  Just keep an eye out, and in the meanwhile, go listen to The Dreaded Diamond.

My buddy Josh’s band Misamore had scored a pretty cool second show for the band, being main support for Murderdolls at Ace Of Spades a few weeks back.  Murderdolls is Slipknot’s Joey Jordison’s sideproject where he plays guitar.  This photo is Wednesday 13, the singer for Murderdolls.

I’d only heard a few songs from Murderdolls before this show, but I enjoyed what I heard.  Didn’t know what the show would be like, but it turned out to be really damn good.  The band was quite on point, and the crowd was really into it–albeit it was a small crowd, but a fierce one.  Unfortunately, I could not get pit access, so I had to shoot from the crowd.  While most of the shots were pretty useless, I did get a handful of good ones; Ace Of Spades even put some of them up on the Ace Of Spades Facebook page (haha.  That rhymes!).

All in all, had a good time with a new friend, and got some decent photos while supporting an old friend/band, Misamore.

My buddy Josh’s band Misamore had scored a pretty cool second show for the band, being main support for Murderdolls at Ace Of Spades a few weeks back.  Murderdolls is Slipknot’s Joey Jordison’s sideproject where he plays guitar.  Misamore is a band that has been in a long time coming through various lineups, attempts, and a LOT of effort on Josh’s part–I was even in the band for a very short period of time several years ago.  The band has changed musically a lot since then, but still retains the technical proficiency and songwriting that he excels at.

They put on a great show, and I had a blast finally being able to see and photograph them.  Unfortunately their set got cut short when Mike’s bass rig suffered a brown-out and wouldn’t turn on again for a while.  By the way, Mike is an AMAZING bassist, I’m glad that they got someone so damn good to round out the band.

This is a shot of Josh doing his thing on stage.  Be sure to go pick up a copy of their debut album, hit up their facebook page for more info.

My buddy Josh’s band Misamore had scored a pretty cool second show for the band, being main support for Murderdolls at Ace Of Spades a few weeks back.  Murderdolls is Slipknot’s Joey Jordison’s sideproject where he plays guitar.

So I roll up to the show, not many people at the venue yet, and the first band kicks off.  Spider City, from Sacramento.  I’m watching the show with a friend, and I look up at the guitarist and realize:  That’s Dean, from Track Fighter!!  My interest was suddenly piqued, considering as I didn’t know that another friend of mine was playing this show in a band I’d never heard of.

Dean puts on one hell of a show, he’s flawless on guitar, and always gets seriously into playing.  Dude kills it.  If you ever have a chance to go see one of his apparently several bands, do so–you’ll be entertained.

Speaking of Track Fighter, I went to their show at Ace Of Spades on Saturday where they headlined.  Photos from that show will be up soon, once I have some actual free time spent not going to shows.

I got a really great chance to see some local bands including F1rst Class Citizen, Fallrise, and others, open for Taproot.  I’ve been a Taproot fan for a long time–”Poem” grabbed me the first time I heard it and wouldn’t let go of me.  Stephen Richards’ vocals have always stood out to me, with a really unique style and tone.

Needless to say I was extremely stoked to see them at The Boardwalk.  They were spot on, and killed it, playing to a sadly not packed room.  But that made my task of picture-takin’ easier, so it works for me.

This is one of my favorite shots of the whole night.  He looked over, saw my camera up, held that pose looking right at me until the flash popped a second or two later.  I have to give major props to any musician–especially those in the “big leagues” who will deliberately act for the camera.  And Stephen did it a LOT for many people with anywhere from cameraphones to more “pro-looking” setups.  He even grabbed a fan’s camera from someone in the front and started taking pictures of the fans!  Dude puts on one hell of a show, that’s for sure.  Seemed like a really nice guy.

My friends in F1rst Class Citizen played The Boardwalk a few weeks back, and opened for Taproot.  This is my second time seeing FCC, and they did not disappoint, of course.  Lydia used to be in a pretty awesome local band called Aroarah, whom I only had the fortune of seeing once before she left the band.  Xander was in a band up in the Redding area called Common Ground, who I used to dig.  I’ve still got an ep/demo or something of theirs in a box somewhere.  Definitely very cool people, and excellent musicians all around.

This shot is one of my favorites from the night.  There’s a common trend between all these Boardwalk photos, unfortunately, and it’s that they’re a bit soft in the focus of the photos.  The lighting at the Boardwalk is pretty atrocious unless you’re blasting flash, and I just don’t like to roll like that.  I have a cheap third-party TTL flash that I use on a TTL sync cord in my left hand, shooting with my right.  Sometimes that flash gets it right, sometimes it doesn’t, sadly.  Half the time, the camera doesn’t even act like there’s a flash attached, so it sets up shutter speeds in the 30-80th/sec range.  Add to that single-hand-holding with moving subjects and you get a majority of shots being soft.  I still end up posting the ones I like despite the lack of sharpness.  If it conveys the emotion of the performers and is still mostly legible, it works for me in these situations.

Anyways, the reason why I really liked this shot is because of the camera being held up.  It looks like it’s a Rebel T3i or similar with one of those Gary Fong Puffer Pop-Up Diffusers on it.  Well, F1rst Class Citizen’s thing is their references to their fans as “paparazzi”.  They actually have tabloids on their website, as cool little fun promo materials.  As soon as I saw this person throw their camera up in the air as I was actually leaving, being done shooting their set, I knew I had to take this shot even though it was a quick, rough, poorly lit situation.

But after a bit of rescue and TLC in post production, I think it’s a viable image, and works with their paparazzi theme use.

Went to go see my buddies in F1rst Class Citizen open for Taproot at the Boardwalk a couple weeks ago, there were a ton of bands on the bill.  Second up that night was a band called Fallrise, who were pretty sick.  And the drummer was a friend of the people I was at the show with, very cool stuff.

This is Gor, from Fallrise.  Got some good shots of him, and I like this one among the best.  Not the best technical photo, but The Moment is there.  You fellow musicians know what I mean, and this shot makes me feel it, makes me miss playing live (my last band’s last performance was on this very same stage, and I was standing in this very same spot).

So I’ve got some cool stuff in the works at this point.  Some of it solidified, some of it extremely formative, some of it just random collections of thoughts and ideas.  But I’ll be putting out some info as it becomes the right time.  Got some big shows going on, and I’ll have the opportunity to photograph some pretty sick bands, so I’m stoked.

Here’s a random shot I took while testing out the Canon 85mm f/1.2L.  I was showing Veronica some differences between flash techniques, and ended up with this one.  Completely ballparked flash settings, firing from the side into her glass of ice water.  Again, don’t mind the mess on the counter, but I’m still constantly amazed at how sharp this lens is.  Pure hotness.