Darkbird

Explanation tl;dr: f/1.7, 1/15 or 1/30, Lomography 400, 50mm

Going into Side One Track One, Darkbird was one of the bands I had seen before and I had a good idea of what kind of picture I wanted to take. I'd already been at Hotel Vegas/The Volstead for a few hours and caught some shows, including Jane Leo, Foxtales, and a bit of Megafauna and Queen Serene. I'd already taken a decent chunk of pictures and felt a bit comfortable with the camera. That said, I had only gotten my film camera about a week beforehand and had only shot a single roll of black and white film (100 ISO). Shooting 400 ISO, though, I didn't really know what kind of film grain I'd get or how that'd affect the clarity of the images I ended up with. All in all, I ended up pretty surprised at how nice the colors of the Lomography film turned out, as well as this particular image. Also, I kind of like the mild grittiness of the film grain.

I knew going into taking pictures of Darkbird I wanted to highlight the energy of the front woman, Kelly Barnes, and the energy of the band overall. Considering the only lens I had was a 50mm, I knew I'd have to be relatively close, this is true for most of the music pictures, if only to get enough motion captured. Personally, I enjoy being towards the front of crowds at a show anyways. I think this is mostly because I like the energy of the crowd towards the front. They're either fans or otherwise want to enjoy the show up close and aren't afraid to enjoy it. I can't quite remember what exact settings I used for this particular image, but I imagine it was probably as wide as I could get with my lens, f/1.7, and a shutter of either 1/15 or 1/30. I feel like I remember wanting to make sure this picture was focused on Kelly, though it looks like it might be focused a bit further back. Either way, when I got the pictures back, I found myself drawn to this image due to it lining up pretty closely with what I intended. On the left side the guitarist, Brian Cole, is largely reduced to a blurred head next to the speakers while Kelly strikes a strong pose in the center. While the actual colors on the day weren't quite what turned out here, I actually like the kinda pink/magenta glow. It seems like the Lomography film does this a fair bit, creating these kinds of pastel neons where they aren't quite so strong in real life.

Before ending this, I want to talk about another Darkbird picture I took towards the end of their show. Below is an image I took to intentionally show a picture I knew wouldn't really end up that interesting. I took it from the back of the crowd and all in all, the image feels really flat. Honestly, there's nothing too wrong with it. Unlike the first picture, you can actually see the whole band! (besides the drummer) You can also see the crowd and that it seems to be relatively deep, I think I was probably 10 rows back as opposed to the 1 or two from the other picture. But the image also feels a bit bland and lifeless. Perhaps if the crowd had their hands up or someone were in the middle of jumping there'd be more apparent energy. In a later post, I'll show an image which could work from this distance and this same lens. I think with this I just want to highlight that where you stand affects not just your view, but your possibilities.

Darkbird