This picture of Yonatan Gat, guitarist for Monotonix, was taken at the High Noon Saloon in Madison, WI, during a concert on October 2nd, 2009. It captures the mass chaos of a Monotonix show quite fully. Members of the band playing in the crowd, separated by fans that are half into the band and half there because of word of mouth of the insanity that had been conveyed to them. Guitarist separated from drummer by what looks to be some old punk rock dude that didn’t expect the noisy garage rock band to have a CBGB’s on a good night style crowd. Young kids surrounding them that wouldn’t even know what CBGB’s was if it hadn’t been for Lane’s band trying to gig there in Gilmore Girls (but is that too old for these kids too? maybe…)

In order to get this photo I had to crank the flash up and still go with 1/250th and a jacked ISO, because there’s no way I am taking the good camera into the middle of the fray. Last time I tried that I found my flash on the floor on the other side of the bar after the show was done (sticky and still working, to my surprise). Then I did post in Lightroom to get the Maximum Rock ‘N’ Roll circa-1985 black and white style of the photo… Perfect for that zine I’m never going to print.

The photo above really works well with the song on this page. Almost to the point of confusing them in my mind.

Just completed the digital version of the poster for the Call Me Lightning / Zebras / The Hussy / The Transgressions show at The Project Lodge on Thursday, August 19. This show should be over the top, with one of the best local lineups of the summer opening for one of Milwaukee’s best bands in a tiny little venue.

In case you missed Call Me Lighting one of the last times they came through town when the opened for Monotonix at the High Noon Saloon, here’s a pic from their set:

If you want to see more of the photos from that show, I’ve got them on flickr, otherwise see you at The Project Lodge!

I’ve been taking lots of pictures with my newest camera, a blackbird, fly twin-lens reflex (TLR) 35mm camera. The problem with film is getting it to digital in a high resolution file. Yeah, stores will give you a CD full of 1-2Mb scans of your film, but when you’re used to a 15Mb+ camera, those files just won’t do. They don’t edit well in Photoshop or Lightroom, and usually are done with a fairly poor quality scanner in the first place (ie. color noise on par with shooting 3200 ISO with my digital). So, what to do?

You could buy a film scanner (which will run you hundreds of dollars), use a lightbox and photograph the negative (then crop it, resize it, process it, blah blah blah) or do something a bit different like the above photo.

The process is quite simple and taken from many graphic designer’s portfolios, where they display images of their physical work in the environment around them (usually on wood texture or something funky that will match the thing being photographed). You can view an example in my portfolio if you’d like (shot on a tile floor).

1. Find a spot in your house, apartment, dorm, whatever, that has a sufficient light to see your print.
2. Then, because you probably have glossy prints like me (I always forget to check matte at the developer), you’ll want to block out any light that may be causing reflections on the surface of the print.
3. Arrange your tripod and camera above the photograph as close as you can get to it while still having texture of what the print is on showing toward the edges of what you’ve framed.
4. Set up the camera so that you’ve got a low ISO, high f-stop and longer exposure (1/10 to 1/100 or thereabouts). This is so that you can avoid as much noise as possible in the photo of the photo. If you have an off-camera trigger, great! If not, just get as close as you can without any visible camera shake.
5. Take your picture.

Now, if you’re really ambitious, you could mark the floor somehow so that you can process a bunch of prints in this manner or start carrying around your camera/tripod setup and get photos of your photos on different backgrounds.

This is just a little trick I picked up, and by no means is it the best method for getting the sharpest, highest quality images in digital from your film. But, it’s quick and it’s cheap and doesn’t look like garbage, so I wanted to present it as one of many methods to get to an end result of the film to digital process.

I intend to change that, and I intend to change that today. Get ready.

Oh, and with the upgrade to WordPress 3, I’m debating adding a true photoblog section to the site. Should be interesting.

Chino Moreno of The Deftones performing at The Majestic Theater in Madison, Wisconsin. The atmosphere their music creates lent to taking some abstract, energy filled, photos that would fit perfectly with their style.

Kurt, from The Leftovers, is coming back to town again. This time with The Goodnight Process, a band that he just joined recently. They’re a power-pop band that I could imagine hearing on the radio in the not-to-distant future. Sloan, in my mind, is a good comparison band.

This tour with The Stereo Flys (Boston, MA) started out in Portland, ME, with us in mind as the furthest west point. Hopefully you’ll come out and take a listen, maybe dance a little, and bring some beer if you want some.

Check out the Facebook event page

Poster I did to get some practice on the print design end of things, since I seem to be living in a web world most of the time. Click the image to see a bigger version at flickr.

The Unicorn Rainbow amp of the most awesomeness does not actually belong to Wyld Stallyns, it belongs to Worrier, a totally gnarly rock ‘n’ roll band from Milwaukee that will make you feel like you’ve got ants in your pants. The photo is from a show they did on April 19 with All Tiny Creatures at the High Noon Saloon. To see all of the photos, click here.

I went to Mickey’s Tavern on Friday night with the intent of enjoying some drinks and rock ‘n’ roll. The PBR went down smooth, and added to my ‘hipster’ cred according to one of the friends there. The bands, on the other hand, were brutal. If you’ve never seen a show at Mickey’s, remember to take earplugs the first time you venture out to. Borr was a brutal two piece from Minneapolis that played second on the bill and filled the room with sound equivalent to that of a six piece post-hardcore band. United Sons of Toil were, well, United Sons. Loud and intense. They put on one of those performances that just reinforces why I’ll be going to check them out most every time they play in town.

Anyhow, the goal wasn’t just to drink and rock out. I had the camera along for the show to experiment a bit. All of the photos I took were with the f1.8 50mm lens, but attached to the end of it was a 0.35x semi-fisheye macro lens. You may see the stupidity in this, since it isn’t going to do much to my 50mm except zoom it out and add extra glass to mess up the f1.8 end of things.

The thing is, that was the exact point of this experiment. Tweak out the camera in ways that most people wouldn’t in order to obtain the most messed up results possible, and then see what I could salvage from those results… That’s why the ISO was set at H2 (12,800 equivalent). The results are a set of really nasty, oversaturated and grimy red and black photos. Well, they were until I converted them to black and white, since, let’s face it, the world doesn’t need any more oversaturated red and black concert photos.

Check out the full set of results.