I took a lot of photos of concerts in 2008. Many of those concerts I wrote about here, and I’ve already posted most of my best shots here, so in this entry I’ll just post a few that I like that for one reason or another haven’t made it to the blog yet. A more comprehensive collection of my favorites from 2008 can be found in this Flickr set.

First, the band I shot most in 2008, Canada’s Unexpect (3 different shows, all at Jaxx). This was also the first time I brought my camera to a concert in 2008 and only the second time I’d shot a show since, oh, 2000 or so. So I was really, quite literally, starting from scratch when it came to concert photography. Definitely didn’t quite figure out what I was doing until a few months in - still working with a slow lens, slow shutter speeds, matrix metering, and aperture priority here, but I managed to get a couple decent shots, like this one:

After the jump, much, much more, including photos and a full list of bands and venues I shot in 2008.

Below, the only jazz concert I shot all year, mostly because DC had a serious lack of creative avant-jazz in 2008 thanks to the demise of Transparent Productions. This was the first show in which I used my 50/1.8. Pictured is Chris Speed, playing with Tim Berne’s fabulous Bloodcount band at An Die Musik in Baltimore.

Below, a shot of Dream Theater’s James LaBrie, at a concert I wrote about extensively here. This was my first real photo pass, in late May.

My favorite pic of Regina Spektor, from her performance on the National Mall for the Israel@60 celebration. Definitely the nicest press pass I got all year, a colorful hard plastic laminate. Much classier than a sticker with a band name scrawled on it :)

The show at Jaxx I shot in late September headlined by Amorphis was a treasure trove of great photos, particularly of Samael, who are pictured below. I got some decent conventional photos but I really like this one just because it’s something different, with all that negative space:

Somehow I didn’t write about the Kamelot concert on this blog. This was one of the best concerts I saw all year, despite the fact that I’m not a huge Kamelot fan and I dislike power metal in general. They were just amazing performers, with amazing lighting, and the photos I got from this show reflected that. I was initially pissed off at this show because one of the bands I wanted to see (the impossibly cheesy guilty pleasure Operatika) were cancelled by the venue, and the entire show was incredibly late. But once Kamelot came on, and once I saw the photos I got, I was quite happy indeed. Below, charismatic frontman Roy Khan, and then principal songwriter Thomas Youngblood.

Just a couple days after that Kamelot show, I shot two shows in one night, both with terrible, terrible lighting. The first was Brave at Jammin’ Java; the light was patchy and dim but I managed to come away with one good shot, below. The second was Salome again (I shot them earlier in the year at DC9) at The Red and the Black; the light was so bad that I shot at ISO 6400 and did some creative processing effects. I kind of like the second shot below, which I processed in extreme high contrast; Kat (Salome’s vocalist, on the left) looks like she stepped out of some kind of creepy horror flick.

Another show with disappointing lighting was Broken Social Scene at the State Theatre. This venue has a sweet lighting rig, but it was put to underwhelming use for this show. Everything was done in deeply colored monochrome washes, mostly really unattractive yellows and blues. Seriously, I got kind of pissed at whoever was doing the light for this show… so much unrealized potential. I did come away with one of my favorite contemplative shots of the year, though:

Then, starting with the Watain show I wrote about earlier, I started using flash at shows where the lighting was miserable (assuming it was allowed, of course). This made my “hit rate” much better and I got decent photos where in the past I would have gotten crap. For example, Talk Normal played in complete darkness when they opened for Marnie Stern; with my flash, I got some photos that are usable if not particularly artful:

At the same show, the lighting on Marnie Stern’s drummer was such that I thought I could get some fun shots taking advantage of the ghosting effect you get with slow-sync flash. I didn’t try it too many times (I think I was flashing away a little too much at that show in the first place), but I did get a couple decent frames.

And then over Thanksgiving weekend, I had a really enjoyable shoot in Raleigh, NC, in which my flash definitely came in handy because all the bands were incredibly active. Immediately below is Sloburn, the first opening band; headlining was Jucifer, the second shot, who played in near-darkness (not quite as bad as Talk Normal but close).

Eh, that’s enough. A pretty random selection of photos, but again that’s because I’ve already posted most of my best stuff to this blog. Here’s to some even better opportunities in 2009!

Bands I photographed in 2008:

• Abigail Williams
• Akimbo
• Amanda Palmer
• Amon Amarth
• Amorphis
• Apothys
• Ayelet Rose Gottlieb/Anat Fort/Rafi Malkiel
• Behold… the Arctopus
• Belphegor
• Between the Buried and Me
• Beyond the Pale
• Black Skies
• Blood Corps
• Boris
• Book of Black Earth
• Brave
• Broken Social Scene
• Calexico
• Cannot Be Stopped
• Caution Curves
• Clouds
• Corima
• Cyndee Lee Rule
• Dälek
• Dark Dissolve
• Decrepit Birth
• DJ Shadow & Cut Chemist
• Dream Theater
• Earth
• Ecliptic
• Edguy
• Ensiferum
• Epica
• Ethnic Heritage Ensemble
• Evangelista
• Exactly
• Extra Golden
• Extra Life
• FFFFs
• Field Shaman
• Foreign Born
• Fuck Buttons
• Gojira
• Gutbucket
• Haale
• Harvey Bainbridge
• Into Eternity
• Intronaut
• In Flames
• Jucifer
• Kamelot
• Kayo Dot
• Kid Koala
• King Giant
• Kristian Blak & Yggdrasil
• La Otracina
• Land of Talk
• Left of Avalon
• Lily Neill & Cartier Williams
• Lykke Li
• Margot MacDonald
• Marnie Stern
• Mashina
• Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson
• Mogwai
• Nadja
• Nihilitia
• Opeth
• Pacific Before Tiger
• Pitom
• Recently Vacated Graves
• Regina Spektor
• Rob Martino
• Salome (2 times)
• Samael
• Sarah Fridrich
• Seacht
• Secret Oyster
• Sigh
• Silver Summit
• Sloburn
• St. Vincent
• Stinking Lizaveta
• Stymphalian Birds
• Talk Normal
• The Absence
• The Acorn
• The Afro-Semitic Experience
• The Australian Pink Floyd Show
• The Builders and the Butchers
• The Green Evening Requiem
• The Nels Cline Singers
• The Plastic People of the Universe
• The Residents
• The Sword
• 36 Crazyfists
• Three
• Tim Berne’s Bloodcount
• Timelord
• Todesbonden
• Tolerance For Tragedy
• Torche (2 times)
• Transient
• Unexpect (3 times)
• Valhalla
• Vermillion Lies
• Vialka
• Virgin Black
• Watain
• Wilco
• Wildbirds and Peacedrums
• Withered
• Woven Hand
• Young Widows
• Zs

Venues I photographed in in 2008, in the DC area unless otherwise noted:

• 9:30 Club
• An Die Musik (Baltimore, MD)
• Artomatic
• Black Cat
• Bohemian Caverns
• Busboys & Poets
• Chief Ike’s Mambo Room
• Comet Ping-Pong
• DAR Constitution Hall
• DC Jewish Community Center
• DC9
• Galaxy Hut
• George Washington University
• House of Sweden
• Iota
• Jammin’ Java
• Jaxx
• La Casa
• Lyric Opera House (Baltimore, MD)
• National Mall
• Orion Sound Studios (Baltimore, MD)
• Paramount Theatre (Charlottesville, VA)
• Ram’s Head Live (Baltimore, MD)
• Rock and Roll Hotel
• State Theatre
• The Red and the Black
• Velvet Lounge
• Volume 11 Tavern (Raleigh, NC)
• Warner Theatre

This entry was posted on Friday, January 23rd, 2009 at 6:07 pm and is filed under Music, Retrospectives. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.