Shooks

Explanation To start off SXSW, let's talk about a band I've already shot a few pictures of already. Back at the end of last year, I shot a roll of film at Empire with the show consisting of Shooks, Animals on TV, and Die Spitz. This pair of pictures is of that first band, Shooks.

I realize now, looking back at that post that I didn't really talk much about Shooks even though I went into both Animals on TV and Die Spitz to some extent. As a band, Shooks is a pretty down the road indie rock outfit. They're energetic even when their music is a bit more downtempo. The vocals tend to be lilting and lyrical, even against the at times angular guitar and bass lines. As always, I'm bad at describing music. However, I will say that as an act their live show is more powerful and energetic than their recorded music affords.

Now, onto the pictures. I've kept these as a diptych or connected pair because one, this roll like the last one was shot on the Canon Demi S, a half frame camera. Also, because I think that it's interesting to look at these pictures together side by side as a pair.

Before digging into the pictures themselves and how they relate, I do want to go over shared aspects and some situational things. These pictures were shot at Valhalla, a commonly rock and metal venue. The lighting was relatively poor, though honestly not too terrible. It was enough that even with the camera I was using, I could reasonably take pictures at 1/15 or 1/30 of a second with 800 ISO film without feeling too strapped for light.

In terms of color, I do think that these are really fun and vibrant. Some of this has to do with this being shot on Lomography 800, which I've shot in the past and does tend to punch up these sorts of neon-y colors. I think another part of it is just that the venue was lit in such a way to have these kinds of colors and lights dominate. The venue's walls are black and pretty neutral, so when lit, they just bleed and get a lot of color. Last thing to note here, I pointed out how reflected light can be really strong with this camera in the last roll post. I think equivalently, this camera has a tendency to sort of flare out lights in general. This is more evident with the first picture where the lights just halo and are really soft looking. No doubt some of this is due to the picture being out of focus, but I don't think that's entirely the case.

Anyways, first picture. This picture is a pretty standard upwards facing picture. It's timed with the main singer gripping the mic and honestly it has that kind of idol or super hero vibe to it. That larger than life kind of feel. I'll also say that this picture, maybe more than the second picture has a really 80s era grunge vibe going for it that I'm kind of all for? While both pictures have a tangible energy to them, they portray that energy pretty differently. I'd say that this first picture mixes a manic energy in the main signer with a cool and faded energy by the guitarist to the left. From grain to effect, this picture really seems to evoke an older era which is interesting and not really what I was going for.

Moving onto the second picture. This picture is perhaps more conventional and a bit newer. While it still has that kind of old grunge type vibe, I feel more of a 90s vibe here than 80s. I think some of this might have to do with the colors. Where the first picture was more dominated by reds, this one is much more green. Also instead of an upward angle, this one is more decidedly eye level or neutral angled, maybe even slightly downward. I'll go ahead and say it, this picture was roughly eye level, the stage is raised up to about shoulder-ish level, about 3 and half to 4 feet up. However, with the main singer crouched, there's more space for the composition to breathe. It's much clearer that this is a triangle formed composition. Even though both pictures share this composition, this one's a lot more obvious since the main singer isn't taking up as much of the vertical space.

While neither picture is what you would call sharp, I don't feel like either really needs to be. The softness and bluriness helps sell that grungy feel. I also think that the bluriness sells some motion that wouldn't be available at a faster shutter speed and with a sharper focus.

I think that sometimes I get caught up in my own head about the composition and structure of a picture that I let go of some of the aesthetic aspects of the pictures. Going into the night, I already kind of knew that the pictures I was going to take weren't going to be super sharp. By giving that up, I allowed myself to play with the composition more and to let go of the exactness of the focus. In these cases, I think that worked out well. In others I don't think that's the case. All said though, I appreciate that these pictures let off a vibe that I hadn't even thought about until I saw them. That in my mind is more than enough to call these a success.

I'm sure there will be more posts coming up regarding SXSW and the bands I saw, so stay tuned.