Last Saturday night I had the pleasure of shooting Colin Hay from Men At Work.  My friend was the concert promoter, and our standing agreement is he lets me into all his shows for free if I take the pictures.  So... I did, hehe.

At the beginning of the show, I positioned myself next to the stage and up close.  I would have been more towards the center, but the way the auditorium seats are, they're barely 2 or 3 feet from the stage, so there just wouldn't be room for me.  After this song he looked at me and asked me if I was trying to steal his soul.  He then said he wishes someone had at least asked him ahead of time.  This sort of freaked me out, since my friend was supposed to have taken care of all this.  More on it in a minute.


After Colin gave me these comments, my friend came up and told me the "terms" so to speak, which as Colin said, it would have been nice to have been told ahead of time.  He said they only wanted me to take pictures during the first few songs and the last few, but none in the middle.  That's pretty standard for concerts, so I wasn't upset.  It just would have been nice if my friend had been a little more prepared.



After the first few songs, he went electric and brought out his band, which includes his wife, named Cecilia Noel.  She has a band in the Los Angeles area called Cecilia Noel and the Wild Clam, which is salsa music.  She dances and sings, reminded me a lot of Stevie Nicks.


I had thought the set would weigh heavily on the Men At Work songs, since it was called the "Man At Work Tour", but really they only played a few of those.  The main focus was on Colin's solo work, which is really good.



After the show, Colin and Cecilia signed autographs for everyone.  I talked to him and apologized to him for "stealing his soul", and in talking, I realized that he thought I was videotaping him!  I said no, it's a still camera, and he said oh, I have no problem with that!  So it all worked out in the end.



I have the entire gallery online if you're interested in seeing the rest:

http://www.thechances.com/gallery/ColinHay070905/index.html

There are 78 images total, both in B&W and color.  This is what I delivered to my friend on a CD.

Thanks for looking!

Here are some pictures of Gregory, the little firestarter. What a difference a year makes, last year he was scared to death of sparklers!



Another of the wild one.



I hope you had as good a time as he did!

Two of my photos were accepted for the 9th Annual Photography Show at Delicato Vineyards in Manteca, CA!  I didn't win any awards, but that's ok, my photos will be displayed in the show at the winery from July 6 to July 30!

Here's the two that were accepted:

Two Butterflies


Jenny


If you want to go see the show, the location is Delicato Vineyards, Highway 99, 4 miles north of Manteca, CA.  They're open 7 days a week, 9am to 5:30pm, and admission is free.  So's the wine tasting!

Hi guys,

It's taken me a week to finish my editing, so here are a few of the results... last Saturday, Steven Delopoulos from Burlap to Cashmere did an acoustic show in my town, promoted by a good friend of mine.  As a favor, I shot the show (plus for my own portfolio work of course).  It looks like I'm going to shoot his shows on a regular basis, too, which is nice because on July 9 is Colin Hay from Men At Work.

At any rate, I wanted to share a few of them with you.  Before I do,  I'll share some technical info.

The stage was in near darkness, Steve wanted it to be an intimate show.  I was lucky in the fact that being an acoustic show, everyone remained seated, so I was able to use my tripod.  Most shots were 1/4 second, sometimes slower.  I shot a total of 4 with flash, which was about the minimum I felt I could get away with.

Because of the lack of light, I was shooting at ISO 1600 as well, which means NOISE CITY.  I used Noise Ninja in post-processing to clean up the noise, and I think it did a tremendous job.  Finally of course, I converted to B&W using the Digidaan filter.

So here are a few.  This first one is one of the few that I used a flash on, and was shot with ISO 100.  I wish I could have shot this way the whole show.



This one has a very "VH-1" quality to it.



He stayed seated all night long.  Speaking of VH-1, the format he took was very similar to VH-1 Storytellers.  It would have worked extremely well, had it not been a theater and had been perhaps a nightclub, or even a dinner-theater type place.



Finally, here's one in color.  Again, I prefer them all in B&W, I think the low-key lighting works best that way.  More natural.



My friend who promotes the shows has a website, http://www.lostsierraproductions.com/, which is where my images will go in the end.  I'm delivering them in digital format, since he doesn't need prints... 30 separate images, both B&W and color.  I'm also going to contact Steven Delopoulos and his management to see if they might want to use these on his website as well.

If you want to see the whole series, they're at http://www.thechances.com/gallery/stevendelopoulos/