The Athlone School of Contemporary Music hosts a 2-floor, 3-hour live featuring local rock bands from around the midlands about once every 6 months, and this year’s show delivered all that could be expected and then some. This year’s line-up featured not only a new batch of singer-songwriters forging out from their cover-bands comfort-zone and performing their own material, but also included a new promising young band, Critic Eyes, fronted by two female guitarists, a rarity in the current music scene.

For anyone who has ever shot a rock concert before, you know that you’ll burn through exposures at an increased rate, one reason why digital has become so appealing. This gig however saw me go through all eight of my 2GB cards while attempting to cover 16 different bands. The photos are plentiful to say the least. :)

Processing them all will take some time, but here’s the first batch for those that are interested.

Sneak Peek

See also the next posts from this night, School of Rock Continued » and School of Rock Continued Again »

Full Gallery

All photos from this set can be found here »

Additional photos from this gig can be found here » and here »

Capture Notes:

The Palace contains a combination of good but minimal directional lighting and tight audience spaces. On the first floor, the stage is recessed into a nook built into the building with a railing separating the stage from the audience and all the lights hung on stage right. The lighting allowed for fantastic back light and halos around the musicians, but unfortunately could only be utilised from one location on the floor, the right corner of the stage. Any farther right, and you’re behind a wall, any farther left and the lighting becomes flat on the subject. Not too much of a problem since that one spot was a real sweet spot for photographs, but it did mean that most of the good exposures were from the same angle.

Additionally, the 1st floor was the only stage that used transition lighting, which meant all the gels were blinking at inexplicable moments. Great for creating energy at a rock show, bad for predicting exposure in a photograph. I’d have my settings dialed in, I’d focus, and just as I’d press the shutter, the stage would plunge into near darkness, or be flooded into over-exposure. It was fun though, kind of like playing a slot machine while chimping through my shots.

The second floor, in the loft, has wide open spaces with the stage fully accessible and unhindered by obstacles. The room however was flooded with directional lighting either too high, or angled too steeply to really create any good catch lights, so all energy injected into the exposures had to be done with composition and colour.

All exposures were taken on a 50mm 1.4 which I chose for the medium shooting range I knew I’d get in the Palace, as well as the low light. ISO 400 on the 1st floor, 100 on the 2nd floor with shutter speeds ranging from 1/100 to 1/20.