Last Sunday, Twin Cities metal promoter “Swordlord” held his last show of the year, showcasing a bunch of local bands and raffling off a gazillion prizes including free admission to all Swordlord shows in 2012 - and this guy does a LOT of shows. I was there to document the evening - highlights below, or check out the full set at Flickr, follow me on Facebook, or follow me on Twitter for more.

Before the show started I did a portrait with two of the bands, Echoterra (above) and Alation. The former have a substantial international following in part thanks to vocalist Melissa Ferlaak Koch, formerly the vocalist of Austrian gothic metal band Visions of Atlantis, whom I saw several years ago opening for Epica, I think. My favorite of that set is above - simple V-formation (I have to be careful lest this become a cliche of mine), Speedlights on either side of the band bounced off of white umbrellas.

Below is one of my favorites of Alation; I had a bit more time with them because we got stuck backstage when the first band, Purified, started their set. Tried a few different looks and the most interesting is the below, with their creeptastic stage props playing a big role in my composition. Again, a Speedlight on either side bounced off of umbrellas - I wasn’t going for anything fancy with the lighting that night.

And then, of course, there was music. We managed to sneak out of the backstage area in time for me to get a couple shots of Purified. Here’s one I like:

Then Alation was up; they were a pretty neat band whose stage presence was completely dominated by their vocalist Angel Bourgeois. They also had a nifty light show that made for some neat photos, although since it was all backlight it meant that I used a lot of flash for their set. A few good ones below.

Echoterra was up next, and their stage presence was also dominated by their vocalist, although Jonah W on keytar also gave me some pretty dynamic shots. Got way too many great shots of them to post them all here, but these are a few of my favorites:

And finally, Dawn of Valor, a power metal band that also featured a charismatic vocalist. I took off right before their last song, which ended up being a poor choice since apparently Angel from Alation joined them onstage, and I wish I’d gotten photos from that. Still, got some good stuff:

Once again, full set here. Enjoy!

I’ve finally finished editing and uploading over 2,000 photos from this year’s USA Ultimate Club Championships. You can see the full galleries over at Ultiphotos. Above is perhaps the most famous of all the photos I got at the tournament - Peter Dempsey of Atlanta’s Chain Lightning going high for a D over Noah Saul of Raleigh’s Ring of Fire. This was one of the shots I submitted for use on the USA Ultimate website, and kind of went viral immediately after being posted. The full sequence starts here.

For the Ultimate folks reading this, a foul was called on the play but was overruled by the observer. I thought it was pretty clearly a foul, which is more evident from the video that’s available. But foul or not, a pretty spectacular play, and I’m stoked that I captured it despite it happening way over on the far sideline from where I was.

I had the chance to do a post-soundcheck portrait with Puddle of Mudd last week before their gig at First Avenue here in Minneapolis. As I was wandering around the venue looking for a good spot to shoot, I decided to keep things simple and not go for an interesting environmental shot like I usually do. With one or two subjects, integrating backgrounds into a good composition and lighting scheme is doable; but when shooting a five-member band with a few minutes to do so, I’ve never had much success. So I picked a basic black background and let the band make the portrait interesting, which, as you can see, they did.

The lighting here is incredibly simple: a speedlight on either side of the subjects, almost directly to either side to give a nice hard sidelight effect. Each speedlight was bounced off a white umbrella and otherwise unmodified. I stood on a step stool, zoomed my 14-24 out as wide as possible, and got this shot.

The band gave me some pretty good live shots as well, although with First Avenue’s high stage, I wasn’t able to get many shots with more than one band member at a time. Below are a few highlights; the full set is here. Also be sure to like my page on Facebook or follow me on Twitter for more!

Black Tide and Throw the Fight opened; the former had this dude, who gave me some amazing shots:

Last week I did a couple portraits with electronic musicians - it’s nice to shoot individuals as opposed to full bands, just because it’s a lot easier to get creative. Setting up complicated lighting setups on the fly for 4- or 5-member bands has never really worked well for me, but in shooting a single performer, I’m pretty comfortable doing interesting setups with just one or two lights. The above shot, of Kraddy at the Varsity Theater, is a two-light setup: an umbrella’d SB-900 camera right as the main light, set up a few feet away to get those hard shadows. The second light was a zoomed and CTO’ed SB-600 behind and below Kraddy to give a bit of a rimlight effect, which is pretty subtle and could be mistaken for ambient lighting - I wish I’d had that light powered up a bit more. I got a lot of help from the theater’s colorful main room environment, of course. This was shot from onstage, after Kraddy’s soundcheck.

I don’t like this one quite as much, but it’s a pre-show shot of Morgan Page at The Lounge in downtown Minneapolis. This is also a two-light shot, a CTO’ed SB-900 camera right as the main light, and then an umbrella’d SB-600 behind the camera to the left as a weak fill. I tried using the glasses set up on the table as a compositional element, but I don’t quite like how that turned out - perhaps a third light with a blue gel highlighting them would have made it a bit better.

In any case, here are a couple performance shots as well. Kraddy:

Morgan Page:

I’m an official photographer for USA Ultimate Club Championships 2011 shooting both for USA Ultimate and Ultiphotos. Club Championships is the annual national (well, North American, as there are U.S. and Canadian teams) championship tournament in Sarasota, Florida for the sport of Ultimate Frisbee, and this year’s installment runs from Thursday, October 27 to Sunday, October 30, featuring 60 teams in four divisions - men’s, women’s, mixed (coed) and masters (old folks).

This photo depicts action between mixed teams Amp (Philadelphia) and Bucket (Atlanta), playing a pre-quarterfinal matchup today. The Amp player (in white) caught this pass to set up the game-winning score. I shot this with my 300/2.8 AF-I on a rented D300s, which I’ve been using alongside my D300 and 80-200/2.8. I also brought my D700 and 24-70/2.8, but I’ve found that it’s more trouble than it’s worth to carry it around as a third body. I missed the focus on this one a bit - the focus is on the Bucket player’s cleats rather than the Amp player’s face, where I’d like it to be. That’s what makes it a web photo instead of one that I’m reserving for possible use in the USA Ultimate magazine. My absolute best shots from the weekend won’t see the light of day for a while, until USA Ultimate decides what to buy for the magazine.

Those top-notch shots aside, photo highlights are being published multiple times per day on the USA Ultimate website, in various galleries here. Much larger galleries are available at Ultiphotos; I am posting galleries at the end of each day and hundreds more photos will be uploaded in the weeks to come after the tournament.

(Sorry for the enormous watermark in the photo above. Not sure what happened there.)

I have not had as much a chance as I would have liked to cover Minneapolis’ version of Occupy Wall Street, OccupyMN, at Hennepin County Government Plaza downtown. But I’ve made it out several times, and just wanted to share a few shots I’ve captured at the ongoing event. Here’s the full set. The highlights here are in no particular order, and were taken on a range of dates from October 7 up through today.

For the photo geeks: I recently sent a solid chunk of my equipment in for repair: D700, 14-24/2.8, 80-200/2.8, and 300/2.8, which is why I haven’t shot any concerts lately. There’s nothing hugely wrong with any of them - it’s all just kind of getting old and not working quite as well as before, particularly with regards to autofocus performance. The D700 passed 150,000 actuations this month, the two telephoto lenses are probably about as old as I am, and the 14-24 takes the brunt of the the abuse my gear gets exposed to at close-quarters shows. So at OccupyMN I’ve been shooting with my D300, some primes, and my old Tokina 12-24/4 wide-angle zoom. I’ve been spoiled by the D700 and 14-24 combo in low light; the D300 just isn’t cutting it for photojournalism in near-darkness. Still, I think I got some decent shots, pumping the ISO to the max and applying noise reduction liberally.

I’ve seen the Norwegian progressive black metal band Enslaved several times, but last night was my first time seeing them as a headliner. It was nice to see them dig a bit deeper into their discography as compared to their opening gigs; there was only one pre-Below the Lights track played (from Frost), but every album from there forward was represented. Hearing the new material compared to the older stuff really highlighted how much spacier the band has gotten over the years, with a certain psychedelic element replacing the overt black metal influence in their sound.

Station 4 is Station 4, which is to say, the lighting sucks, so I shot at ISO 6400 exclusively and used my 50/1.4 a lot. Unfortunately, only Grutle Kjellson and Ice Dale were reliably lit to any extent, so almost all of my photos are of the two of them. Here are some highlights; check Flickr for the full set.

Regular reminder: please like my page on Facebook or follow me on Twitter to keep tabs on my work.

Annie Clark and her band St. Vincent kicked off their fall 2011 tour at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis last night - an interesting venue choice given that they were playing 1,000+ capacity clubs on their last tour. (The small capacity of the Walker’s 400ish seat McGuire Theatre was made up for by the fact that the band played two back-to-back shows last night; I covered the early show.)

Playing material that drew a lot from their just-released Strange Mercy, we got to hear lots of trademark St. Vincent stuff: catchy songs with odd lyrics and brief guitar freakout interludes. Clark had, as far as I could tell, a completely new backing band, with just two keyboardists and a drummer. The loss of the bassist didn’t seem to affect the fullness of the band’s sound, particularly as Clark often used a huge fuzz tone that completely and effectively filled the theater. While I don’t actually like anything St. Vincent has done as much as I like their debut, Marry Me - and they only played one track from that album, the encore-closing “Your Lips Are Red” - it was still a satisfying show and seemed like a pretty great tour kick-off.

The McGuire Theatre has a huge, expansive stage and a gorgeous lighting rig, which was put to good use for opener Cate Le Bon. Unfortunately, Clark set up six or seven feet behind the front of the stage, and the beautiful house lights gave way to a schizophrenic custom light show that often saw Clark lit incredibly brightly from below - hardly a great lighting design for photos. I was actually shooting at ISO 400 quite a bit, but unfortunately nothing aside from Clark was lit anywhere near as brightly. Wide-angle shots were hopeless because of the difference in light levels across the stage, so I just focused on getting some good tight shots of Clark herself.

This is my fifth time shooting St. Vincent; the best lighting was last time I shot them, at the 9:30 Club in DC. That also happened to be my favorite show musically, although the first time in DC’s tiny Rock & Roll Hotel definitely had a particular charm. (The other two times: Virgin Mobile FreeFest and at the Black Cat in DC, both in 2009.) But while this concert wasn’t my favorite of theirs, Annie Clark and company are still reliably putting on great shows.

A few more favorites below; the full set - just a dozen photos - is at Flickr. Also be sure to like my page on Facebook or follow me on Twitter for more!

Friday night was a doubleheader for me: first I hit up Kamelot’s show at Station 4, then I headed to the Cabooze for a CD release show by Gabriel and the Apocalypse. It was a significant show for me because GATA’s new album, New World Disaster, features a portrait of the band that I shot during the promo session we did back in June:

The show was fun - a small but enthusiastic crowd, great energy from the band, nice lighting at the Cabooze. My camera was still kind of screwy from all the condensation I’d put it through at the Kamelot show, so unfortunately a lot of my shots are a bit hazy, but I still came away with some good stuff. Frontlight was pretty inconsistent so I busted out the flash for a few shots, many of which ended up being favorites. Here are a few shots I like; check out more at Flickr.

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He’s not Roy Khan, but new Kamelot vocalist Fabio Lione got a warm welcome from fans at Station 4 in St. Paul last night. Playing in oppressive heat (the venue is in a historic building that has no air conditioning), Lione, the rest of Kamelot, and guest vocalist Simone Simons (Epica) ran through a lengthy setlist drawing mostly on the band’s last three albums. I have a pretty strong distaste for power metal, but Kamelot puts on a reliably good live show, and their music is somehow quite a bit less cheesy than most power metal fare. So I count myself as kind of a fan, much to my own surprise, and had a good time.

Every time I shoot at Station 4 I curse the lighting and the stage setup with the stupid pillar in the middle of the pit. Thankfully, Kamelot brought their own lighting; the pillar wasn’t going anywhere, unfortunately. Three songs, no flash, and while I would have liked to have been able to shoot the Simons/Lione duets (none of which took place in the first three songs) from the pit, I was able to snipe away with a telephoto lens later, and got some good shots that way. Below are a few of my favorites.

The usual plug before getting to the photos: see more of my photos from this show at Flickr, and then like me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter to keep up with my work!

Here’s an example of how the lights were tonight before Kamelot came on with their own lighting rig. This is Blackguard (with guest Alissa White-Gluz from The Agonist, who also played but whom I did not get to shoot unfortunately); this is about as good as the lighting got during their set. I was pretty much at ISO 6400 and slow shutter speeds the whole time.