Once upon a time I used to take photos at gigs, but I gave all that up long ago. It’s a young and/or foolish man’s game. Fighting with security. First Three, No Flash. Finding yourself saturated with errant cups of pish that have been flung by overly excitable muppets. No thank you.
However, my old pals Slime City were playing a rather large headline show this evening, and that was enough to drag me out of retirement. The only issue being that I don’t really have any of my old gear that made such tasks straightforward. Big delicious zoom lenses with optical stabilisation, wide apertures, and fast auto-focus – all a thing of the past. Instead, I now only have a collection of weird vintage lenses with a lot of ‘character’ but which are not especially useful in low light to capture the frentic movement of hyper-active bands. As ever, it was very thoughtful of the lighting tech to make sure that the stage was shrouded in near total darkness until our allotted time in the aptly named photo ‘pit’ had come to an abrupt end.
Despite misgivings over my weapons of choice and swearing that every picture I took was inescapably shite and I had somehow betrayed my legacy as some kind of photographic savant, the experience was reassuringly familiar in a rather pleasant way. I even began to check the current prices for 70-200 f2.8 IS USM lenses on eBay, before snapping back into reality – one where I literally don’t ever shoot pictures any more and have absolutely no need for professional level gear.
Might still buy one though.
Here’s a collection of pictures that aren’t too awful to share. Shot with a mix of the Canon 1Ds Mk II and Helios 40-2 85mm f1.5 manual focus lens, and a Sony ZE-10 APS-C thingy with a bunch of random lenses including a Viltrox 23mm f1.4, Sigma 16mm f1.4, and 7Artisans 7.5mm f2.8.
You can listen to/buy the new Slime City album here.
Bis
Slime City
