To be perfectly honest, I hadn’t realised how long it had been since I last updated. The break? A bit of a fail. But at least I’m doing things in moderation now, instead of running myself into the ground. I’ll do this update in two parts, the first part with the two big bands I’ve shot over the last month, and the second (to come sometime over the weekend) with a few local bands and a night of great music.

I have several categories of reasons why I’d request to shoot a particular band. The first, being that I’m a big fan of them. The second being that I have friends who are big fans of them. Or three, I’ve heard they’re great fun to shoot and will more than likely result in good photos. Panic at the Disco fell firmly into category 2.  Their support band, The Academy Is… were category 1. I requested it on the off-chance I’d be able to see Academy as well, and the gamble paid off. I was the only one who’d requested to shoot the supports as well as the headliners, so I have to give props to Myles from Frontier who had to act as my babysitter for most of the night to make sure I didn’t get up to mischief. I’m pretty sure he had far more important jobs to attend to!

Gabe Saporta, Cobra Starship

William Beckett, The Academy Is…

Brendon Urie, Panic at the Disco

Jon Walker, Panic at the Disco

Ryan Ross, Panic at the Disco

A few weeks later I was off to Metro City for The Living End’s first headline tour in three years. I’ve shot Living End a few times, but I’ve always felt a bit of a weird hoodoo, I’ve never quite been able to nail any photos I was REALLY happy with. Which has always annoyed the crap out of me, cause they’re one of my favourite bands, and I wanted some nice decoration for my walls.

I’d been struggling with the whole RAW thing. It’s EXPECTED that you shoot in RAW, but hard as I try, I can’t recognise it as the best and only option, as I genuinely prefer shooting JPG. I’ve given it a couple of ‘last chances’, as was the case at this show. I shot RAW and large JPG, RAW just to see how they’d turn out, and large JPG as my ‘main’ files. Turned out to be a completely stupid idea, my buffer kept clogging up, and always at crucial moments. But you live and you learn. And for the record, the RAW versions were the ones I edited and sent to print. RAW format survives to face yet another last chance.

Chris Cheney, The Living End

Chris Cheney, The Living End

Scott Owen, The Living End

Andy Strachan, The Living End