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In which we launch the first-ever Tales from the Pit story/review, and Why Even Try Launch “More Than”.

Hi, hello, and welcome!

My name is Skyler and the story I'm about to tell you shall include approximately twenty thousand words of insignificant information that's definitely not aimed at increasing my website traffic. ... Definitely not... ...Anyway... I'm trying to make this a regular type of post, as with all things on this blog; a sort of "concert story", if you will. It’ll mainly include photographer-orientated content such as issues that occurred whilst shooting, though I’ll attempt to add as much crowd and band information as possible. Perhaps now that I've gained the idea, I ought to start shooting a few things around the venue and whatnot to add to these posts. Maybe train stations and car rides with a Tumblr-esque theme, stray dogs and freeways at peak hour, and whatever else is deemed suitable. I needed a name for this segment, though, something memorable and preferably a reference of sorts. So I did what any Five Finger Death Punch fan would do and turned to their extensive catalogue of music to find something even remotely similar to my requirements. And then I realised: they have a live album called Purgatory: Tales from the Pit. I didn't feel "Purgatory" was the best heading, but "Tales from the Pit" had a nice ring to it. Shorten it to TFTP and you've really got something. Sort of. So I suppose we should restart this. Hi, hello, and welcome to Tales from the Pit! *Include all the above nonsense that did nothing more than waste your time and increase my Google search rankings. * ... Let's cut to the chase, shall we? T'was the Wednesday before the With Con show when I found myself at a fish and chips shop, surrounded by drunk dudes and dogs. There were VBs on a table and a pregnant American Bulldog wagging its tail, making me question all my life decisions. Why was I at this place? Why am I a concert photographer? Why does nobody tour in Perth? What is the impact of the dog’s pregnancy on the Australian economy? Etcetera. I had one show coming up, the aforementioned one, this Saturday at Red Lighting Paradise (HQ). Plus a potential Placebo show at Perth Arena. (It later turned out that the Placebo pass was all mine. It also turned out that the concert was cancelled. Read more on that here.) But besides that, I was free and bored out of my mind. That’s the thing about concert photography; you’re either working until your brain explodes - shooting, emailing, arguing with the Internet, editing - or sitting around sending press requests. Or blogging. (School disclaimer: yes, I also study… …when I’ve no editing to work on…) And considering that in the last six months I’ve only covered nine shows and almost Placebo, that’s a lot of wasted – sorry, school-orientated - time. (Update: another show happened last Friday, Homebrand's "Shelf" launch show.) I soon returned home to a stable wifi connection to find a photographer’s favourite message: “Would you be able to cover our launch show this Friday? Sorry for the late notice!” T’was from one of my favourite local acts, Why Even Try, known for their (positively) insane sets and marvellous music. Supporting them were Grey States, Shedhead, and Crown Loser, three bands I hadn’t previously photographed but was extremely excited for. The late notice didn’t bother me, though I was left trying to back out of prior arrangements. Before long, we’d confirmed the shooting arrangements and everyone resumed with the launch show preparations: set list confirmations, instrument things that I’ve no clue about ‘cause my job is to just click a camera button, etcetera. The only problem I seemed to have (aka that my parents seemed to have) was the two-shows-in-a-row ordeal. The closest I’d gotten to this was in June, with the Boris the Blade Warpath Weekender on the 3rd and SOTA Festival two days later. Not to mention that those shows were back when I had lower self-expectations and everyone was used to waiting up to a week for photos. Nowadays, it was show day on Friday and photos by Sunday at the latest. But two shows in a row? Having to go from prep to travel to shooting to travel to sleep to editing to prep to travel to shooting to travel to sleep to editing again? Whilst suffering from an extremely annoying cold that left me coughing with every breath? This would be interesting. Friday came soon enough. T'was my first day back at school after a week of feeling sick as all hell, and the amount of work I received was definitely more than what was taught. "Test next Monday!", "This is due, erm... today!", "This is worth twenty percent of your overall mark!", "Don't forget your bibliography!", the list could go on forever. Concentrating on all those tasks was nearly impossible. There were two shows coming up and I still felt like crap. I made a mental note of everything I had to do. Prep gear, charge batteries, ensure the lenses are clean, pack, DON'T FORGET THE MEMORY CARDS, bring earplugs, and, of course, clear enough space on my laptop to load the couple thousand photos. (Photographer rant: why do laptops have such limited space and why do raw images take up so much of it?! And why aren't the affordable hard drives Mac-compatible?!) The evening rolled around rather quickly. Before I knew it, I was outside HQ, wondering why, exactly, there was a razor blade on a picnic table. As always, there were young children around with their parents, skateboarding, scootering, and just generally being really freaken loud. The weather was nice, though. T'was that perfect winter-going-onto-spring style that you usually found around there. And everybody knew each other. Well, most people did, whilst I just stalked everyone online. (Oh sue me.) Soon enough, we found ourselves inside the venue and deciphering gear. The latest edition to my kit, a beautiful 85mm f1.8 Nikkor, was my go-to lens, and I anticipated it to perform similarly to how it did at the Ambleside show. Mounted on my entry-level DSLR, the Nikon D3400, I thought I had the best setup ever. Key word: thought. The lights dimmed shortly after, and Crown Loser - aka James and Co. - were onstage, facing a crowd of fans - aka friends - and a lens that was failing to focus - aka my heavily praised 85mm f1.8 Nikkor.

When you consider it, concert photography is rather simple: you choose a subject, have your lens focus on it, press the button on the camera, and spend thirteen hours trying to save the image the next day. But when said lens cannot focus on said subject, you my friend are fucked. Because, no matter what fancy Tumblr aesthetic you were "going for", a blurry photo is a blurry photo, and a blurry photo is shit. So I could've taken a thousand fuzzy images and made them greyscale before trying to convince the band that it was "supposed" to look like that, but I wasn't about to. I knew they'd see right through it - even my grandmother would. The problem was, I hadn't realised my lens issue automatically. It wasn't until half way through CL's set that I finally noticed that the pixels were blending into a blurry mosh pit. (That made no sense but anyway...) Was my lens dusty? Dirty? Fucked? Had my friends pulled some crude joke on me at school? Oh, that's right - I don't have friends! (I'm joking, I've around three...ish.) (I also don't usually take my gear to school.)

So I had to go clean it. Except that didn't help. Nothing helped. I messed with my ISO and threw manual mode into a frenzy. Maybe it had something to do with the fogginess? That sometimes happens. The venue either uses smoke machines to create better light illusions (which are useless if you're employing green and red lighting anyway) or has a large number of people in a small space sweating like crazy. , it created fog and wouldn't be helpful. Of course, said fog would disappear soon enough, but that's the thing: fog wasn't the problem. So what was the issue? I was fucked if I knew! I continued changing my settings and attempting new angles. I made more trips to my equipment and I wouldn't blame anyone in the audience for wanting to kill me for that, because let's face it: nobody appreciates the idiot who keeps interrupting your viewing pleasure every five minutes due to lens issues. Or angles. Or memory cards. Or batteries. Or - you get the point. It was a frantic set. I managed to get a minuscule nine photos out of the entire thing, which was disappointing but better than nothing. The band was amazing, of course. I don't know a lot about music (besides how to photograph and headbang to it) but they did really freaken well, delivering a dynamic, memorable set. I'd say something even more generic such as "the crowd seemed to enjoy themselves immesely" but if you know that crowd, and if you're reading this then you probably do, they're not exactly fussed as long as they can jump around and yell random crap. (Which, quite frankly, is the best type of audience.)

As they were playing their final song, Dion said, in the way he always does, "SHEDHEAD FUCKING SUCK!" And who was up next? You guessed it - Shedhead.

With my ineffectual lens still ineffectual, the band took to the stage, delivering a magnificent set that had the whole crowd headbanging and screaming inside jokes.

I decided to swap my gear at some point during their set, as evident in the photos. For comparison, here's a shot of their (extremely talented) (I need new adjectives) lead singer and guitarist, Alex, taken with the 85mm:

And from roughly the same angle with a 35mm:

There's obviously quite a difference, as you'd expect. It's always of great appreciation to have various lens sizes, for sometimes you're after full stage shots or landscape full-body shots and other times you want close ups, but unfortunately I didn't have that pleasure for the majority of this show.

I'm not about to lie: it pissed me off. It truly did. You've probably realised that by now. Here I was, being expected to take (relatively) professional(ish) photos, depending on this bloody combination of glass and plastic Nikon dare call a lens, and it was completely failing me. (Did I mention that it was an excess of $500? Yup.)

Now, I know that most of you photographers out there will be scoffing at me, tired of my complaining and thinking something along the lines of, "It's not about the gear you have, but how you use it." Well, that's a valid claim. It is. But this usually comes from someone who either shoots with multiple lenses, or some smart ass who doesn't even do photography. You have to go based on what the bands are after, what they typically end up posting. You send them twenty-something photos, and they'll use a couple for profile photos and some for their social media. And which ones are used for social media? Predominantly closeups.

So, if the band you're shooting for is (potentially indirectly) after zoom-ins and your 85mm is broken, you my friend, are, as previously stated, fucked. And there's absolutely nothing you can do about it for the rest of the show except sit around and weep or take out your old 35mm.

But hang on, Sky! Don't you have a 50mm?

I wished I did. (Note: I purchased one soon after this gig. Like, the next day. I'll get to that in my next post on the With Con show; it was quite the drama.)

So stuck in those photographical Down Days I remained. (See what I did there? No? Go educate yourselves here.) The band continued playing adroitly, and before I became accustomed to shooting with the 35mm again, their set was over.

Halfway through.

During the intermission, I came up with a game plan: shoot the first song or two with the 85mm and hope to capture a useable image, then swap over to the 35mm.

Grey States (who I always thought were Greystates) were soon up, and I was faced with a new issue: someone - a band member's father, most likely - was Skyping a relative to show them the entire set. Whilst in the photographer spot. (Is it just me or is there an unspoken rule at HQ regarding the corner where the stage and pit meet? Like, that lil' gap? Isn't that for photographers? And, if it's a really popular band, for extreme fans as an addition to the front row? Photographers, what're your takes on this? Aren't we supposed to get stuck in that section?)

And I get it; a former member of Green Day was performing. But move out of the fucking way! If you want evidence of the set, you've got these professional(ish)(not really) photos to display. Send them to those relatives. Do what you want with them (just offer a bit of credit for ya gal here). Skype later, yeah? I was probably in the way the entire time regardless. (Side note: I can imagine that relative just saying something along the lines of, "Ko je ona budala što uvjek stoji ispred kamere? Ošni ju, jebo ju konj!" Assuming they're Bosnian. Which they most likely aren't.)

Just stay out of Sheldon Cooper's spot.

As for the band, well, damn. They delivered an incredible set, incorporating magnificent instrumentals and musical creativity. (Has anyone realised just how little I know about music and musical terminology? It's rather ironic. Comment some new words that you usually use to describe music.)

Why Even Try were soon playing, and by this point I was through with my 85mm. It wouldn't focus, it wouldn't photograph, it wouldn't function the way it was supposed to. So the 35mm it was. Back to getting ultra close to people, apologising waaaay too much, doing what I'd do anyway and taking shots from the stage, suffering, etcetera. All whilst listening to a riveting set and trying not to dance.

Honestly though, the guys were a prime example of why the Western Australian music scene isn't dead yet; their performance was dexterous and exuberant, making for a convivial night that may or may not have resulted in some pretty cool photos (if I do say so myself). "More Than" is definitely worth checking out, just as all their songs are. All the bands' Facebook links will be listed later on in this post, so leave them a like and listen to their music.

And that was that.

MUSIC SUMMARY:

Crown Loser: incredible/5

Shedhead: fuck yes/5

Grey States: outstanding/5

Why Even Try: 69/5

PHOTOGRAPHICAL SUMMARY:

Lenses: kill me now/5

Camera: for the price I paid, I'm not allowed to complain/5

Lighting: if I had the money I would change the venue's entire lighting setup/5

Editing: time consuming/5

My sanity: nonexistent/5

These aren't real ratings? Well... it's not exactly a "real", "generic", "stereotypical" music blog; one moment we'll be discussing shows, the next we'll be reviewing records and considering the environmental impacts of veganism and how minimalism influences tour life. All whilst poorly referencing lyrics and incorporating weird metaphors and Shakespearean terminology. I don't understand it either.

So that was Friday. Up next: Saturday.

No shit, Sky.

Also up next: the With Con show. On the aforementioned Saturday.

Stay tuned.

Until then, go listen to all the bands mentioned in this post. Find their Facebook links here:

Why Even Try

Grey States

Shedhead

Crown Loser

Live long and headbang, xx-Skyler Slate

#bands #livemusic #gig #concert #review #concertphotography

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