Lomography 800

Unlike the previous roll, this one was…not one of my favorites. I only really ended up liking 5 of the pictures with the majority landing pretty squarely in the “these are fine but whatever” camp of pictures. Since there aren’t really that many I enjoyed I want to talk about them briefly and explain some issues I ran into during this particular roll of film.

But first, in terms of content, it’s largely dominated by two live music acts, Bad Bad Hats with their opener Gully Boys and Tomar and the FCs. The Bad Bad Hats/Gully Boys show was shot at 3Ten ACL Live and Tomar and the FCs was shot at Antone’s. The rest consisted of a random assortment of shots from around downtown.

The first picture I want to talk about is the picture about the Paramount Theatre in the first row. I took this picture after seeing some improv comedy and wandering around downtown. I’m not completely in love with it, the contrast isn’t as strong as I’d like. But I do like the human interaction of the man putting up the letters in the marquee, with people walking below dimly lit.

The next couple of pictures are the ones of Gully Boys. As a girl punk band, I really wanted to capture their rawness and energy and overall I think I did alright. I think personally, it would’ve been interesting to shoot with a more telephoto lens. The stage at 3Ten is both somewhat wide and somewhat deep and the bandmembers were spaced across the entire stage which made it difficult to get them all in one space. By standing further away and using a mildly telephoto lens, it might be possible to push them all into the same space without it feeling too empty. Note: I could also use a wide angle lens but then I might risk them feeling way too far apart and be even worse off, in my opinion. It’s definitely something I want to try out since I’ve almost exclusively been shooting with a 50mm normal lens.

The next picture is of Bad Bad Hats with the front woman, Kerry, back to back with the bassist. I just think it’s a fun scene and shot to capture the whole band really well. The smile on the bassist’s face works and it just a quirky and simple picture. Not much else to say there.

The last picture I liked was the second one I talked to in that second space between post. It’s just a nice, clean picture with a sharp idea and execution. Even though it’s nothing particularly special, I have a soft spot for “the space between”. Look forward to more of those because I love looking for them.

Now let’s talk about some of the difficulties I had with this roll. More specifically, the difficulties shooting at Antone’s during the Tomar and the FCs show.

Overall, the environment was pretty hard to shoot. The interior of Antone’s was pretty dark that night but there were also really bright spotlights to the back of the stage. Unfortunately, while bright, the spotlights weren’t particularly directional. That meant that they were both diffuse and bright, making any sort of contrast based shot difficult. Additionally, there was a lot of mood lighting courtesy of a local group, using projectors and other interesting analog techniques. That ended up creating some awkward mottling light effects that further complicated any sort of consistent picture taking.

All told, I’m personally pretty disappointed with this roll, there are a lot of pictures that are fine, but few good ones and more bad ones than I’d like. I enjoyed watching the shows, but ultimately the photography was lacking. It’s not even like I pushed any boundaries or tried something significantly different. Just disappointing.