I went to venue The Arlene Frances Center in Santa Rosa on Saturday night to see some bands play. I had never been to that before but it’s pretty nice and very artsy. I brought my Canon Rebel T6, which old, but still a newer camera than my other Canon, which is a Rebel Xsi…and that is old. I usually bring the Xsi to rowdy or shows that I don’t mind if it gets broken. This Canon T6 has a higher ISO that goes to 6400 of course that only does a little bit if you have a shitty lens, which I do. I really need to buy some better lenses.
Anyways, I wasn’t sure how the lighting was going to be there, but I believed it to be better than the other darker venues that I go to, which is pretty much just Cafe Colonial. Anyways, I decided I wasn’t going to use my flash, just to see how that went. It didn’t go too bad for the first band! I was able to take some good pictures as long as the musicians were standing directly in the light. I like how it looked. But then Abhorrency played, and they want the lights dark and all red, which is never good for me.
Lucky for me, the other two bands used pretty much the same lighting as the first band did. I knew almost all the pictures would have to be edited. I was able to look at the pictures the next day and found about 50 decent ones. I was just kind of sad because I didn’t get photos of every single member and I didn’t really get any good drummer pictures. I always like to have pictures of every musician, just to make it fair.
I’m fairly happy with the pictures I took, but I’m always amazed to see the pictures from other people who have better gear. It almost looks effortless that they get great pictures with a good lighting, even of the drummers.
I’m not gonna lie… I don’t have very much experience playing with different lenses. I don’t even know what lens I would get if I was to buy one right now. I also don’t want to dump a lot of money on the lens because I probably won’t use it that much. I pretty much stay taking pictures in darker venues and rely on my flash. I wish I had some different lenses to play with to see what I liked.
I did get to meet another photographer that I’ve been following on Instagram for quite some time! Super nice guy! You can check out his work here on his Instagram: GRAIN FACTORY
Here are some pictures I took of Hexen House, Abhorrency, Funeral Chant, and Vile Rites:
These are just some that I feel turned out decent based on my low lighting/shitty gear struggle. You can see the rest in my gallery.
Angelize Photography 