Jon Brion at Warsaw 05.06.16

Five years ago, I attended my first Jon Brion concert, after an eventful day at a Renaissance Fair with my older brother Nick at my side. Back then, I was still trying to get into concert photography and it's pretty hard for me to look back at those pictures. There are a couple I like, but eeeesch, good thing I got better. These days, I usually ask for a photo pass and cover shows for Surviving the Golden Age. For this concert, I was there as a fan, along with some new friends, but it's so hard for me to not bring anything to a show. I took along my mirror less EOS M with the kit lens and an 85mm.

I am not a fan of that kit lens at all and really struggled to get it to perform, but as you can see from the photos, I was a little too close for the 85mm with a cropped sensor. I ended up taking a lot of detail shots that I thought were interesting. That beat up old amp really spoke to me. I picked the right side of the stage because honestly, trying to get interesting shots of a person at a piano is rough. Of course, the stage crew set up a music stand right in front of me, so I had a fun time working around that. All in all, they aren't my best work, but there are more than a couple I'm happy with this time around. I went with more of a grainy processing style because I felt like that fit this performance.

Oh hey, and maybe I should tell you a little about the show too. I'm a little rusty at this. It was a much better set than the first time I saw him. Besides all of the equipment working, yey!, there was a long set at the end of the night where the audience was singing along, to the point where Brion wasn't even using his microphones. There's something so special about that type of audience participation; it's what I've always loved most about Ben Folds. When a crowd breaks into perfect harmony during Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here, you get goosebumps.

Many thanks to my friends Shellye and Dean who made sure I was able to meet and talk to Jon at the end of the night. I don't always like talking to musicians I'm in awe of, sometimes I turn into Stan from South Park when he talks to Wendy, but Dean very innocently reminded me, "This isn't someone famous, it's Jon." As it turns out, Jon thinks Polaroids are pretty cool and was gracious enough to let me snap a quick portrait.

Quite a different experience from five years ago, wouldn't you say? If you're reading this post in a timely fashion, Jon Brion is performing tonight at City Winery. It's a late show, starting at 11, but if you can make it, you should definitely check it out. With audience members shouting requests and one musician bouncing around between instruments, I promise it will be unlike anything you've seen.

Shooting Calendar Completed!

365 days, 1 photo per day. It might not sound that complicated, but let me tell you, a 365 Photo Challenge is nothing to shake a stick at. Through sickness, long work hours, holidays, I was there, taking a picture. Since I needed a bit of direction to keep me going throughout the year, I decided to do what is called a Shooting Calendar. I wrote down 31 words onto pieces of paper, put them into a glass jar and each day I would pick a word to photograph. At the end of the month, I would start over and shoot the words again. Some words don't have as many photos because of the shorter months. A couple of times I put the word back into the jar by accident and shot it twice that month, but I made sure to pull that word the next month to even things out. To make things even more interesting, I decided to only use one lens/camera for the entire month. There were definitely lenses that I struggled with, curse you Petzval!, but there were also lenses that I absolutely fell in love with, I'm looking at you 35-350mm! I couldn't stand the inaccuracies of the Instax camera or the ridiculously small images it produced; about the size of a business card. I had some issues with my Polaroid 100, I can't blame a 50 year old camera for being a little finicky, but by the end of the month, I hit my stride with it.

What I learned about myself as a photographer during this photo challenge: I am such a macro photographer, it's not even funny. I like to zoom in and fill the frame. I love smooth bokeh. When I took the time to set up the photos with good lighting, I loved the result; I wish I had taken more time to do that, but you know, life. My advice to someone that's thinking about this challenge? Pick good words. I had a few in mind, but I asked friends to give me some suggestions. I'll probably never photograph a keyboard again as a result of this. But I'm really glad that I did it and I'm pretty excited to show you the results.

I put all the photos for a particular word into a collage for you to check out. Here are 365 photos for you!

Polaroid Week (Spring 2014)

Last week was the first of two Polaroid Weeks. I joined the group a day late because I hadn't had a chance to take the photos I wanted. Even with my 8 submissions, I was very pleased with the results. My theme this year was scenes from my hometown, Milford. I used my newly refurbished black SX-70, and went through three different packs of film: SX-70 color, 600 silver frame with an ND filter and SX-70 black and white. There's either a light leak on the top left corner or my frog tongue shield is slightly offline, which is why you see those bright white spots of undeveloped film. Be sure to check out the entire pool over on Flickr