Color '92

3 more roll posts for this year and this one’s a new one. This roll was shot on Lomography Color ‘92, an intentionally vintage looking color negative film rated at ISO 400. The colors are intentionally pastel and soft. Thankfully this roll was shot in between shows so on either side of it you’ll see more “normal” color variations via Portra 400 and Fuji 400 which is next. Overall, it’s a nice roll to shoot, though as you can see it’s a bit lacking in contrast. I like the effect and it could be fun to play with, but if you’re looking for sharp contrasts it’s just not the roll for you.

Anyways, continuing on, this roll starts where the previous one left off with Candy Riot playing the last set following Lena Luca and Swiss Banks. They were a pretty decent 3 piece pop band and at the end of their set a pair of dancers came up. I like a lot of these pictures. I was clearly aiming to use the lights, and the softness of Color ‘92 makes for an interesting effect. I’m not gonna say it’s perfect. Again I feel like I’d prefer many of these pictures to be one stop darker but the “overexposure” isn’t necesarily a bad thing. In addition to the pastel coloring, it gives off a very dreamlike quality that sharper contrasts and a more saturated color palette wouldn’t give off. I do wish I had done more with the timing and created more blurring effects. I decided to capture more posed shots and I don’t think that’s necessarily the correct thing to do.

Moving on to the bottom left is a collection of pictures from a pair of sets featuring Bruce, featuring the front woman of local act Calliope Musicals, and a solo set by Caroline Rose who I briefly mentioned last year. While I don’t think these pictures are necessarily that bad, overall they’re a bit bland and static. I enjoyed the shows though and do want to see Caroline Rose with a band. At this point I’ve seen them twice without and it’s a very different experience than their recorded music. So I’m quite curious what a more normal performance by them is like. Solo acts are difficult for me because there’s less you can really do in terms of image conception. This is especially the case if there aren’t other things to interact with. For example, when I was taking pictures of Lena Luca, while yes she has a drummer there, mostly I structure those as 1 subject compositions. However, most of the time there’s smoke or lighting I can use to create emphasis or archetypal images. When the environment is as uninteractive and flat as this show, there’s not a whole lot else to do but take some kind of simplistic picture as shown here.

To close out the roll are some pictures from Grocery Bag’s EP release on November 25th. Specifically on this roll are the first set of the night, Bigfoot and the Gregs, and a bit of the second set of the night, HOT///CAKES which is a few pictures right next to Caroline Rose.

I think I mentioned it in a previous post, but the Parish, where this show was at, has two floors for the audience. Because of that, I wanted to try out the 105mm lens from the upper floor. You can see those pictures up top, below the Candy Riot pictures. While I don’t think they’re bad, I find them a bit flat in comparison to the ones I took from the ground floor. The top down angle is just not as expressive. While I do like the one on the right side with the audience, including another photographer, it’s still not really a great picture. I’d argue at least some of that is just that because it’s a 105mm lens, everything’s kind of far away so there isn’t any real focus separation. What I will say is that collapsing the space between the band members is quite interesting here and makes them feel quite a bit closer than the ones taken from the ground floor.

With that said, The ones taken from the ground floor just have a lot more visual impact. They can make use of space and focus separation better. And they can also make better use of timing and pose cues as seen in the bottom right corner. That picture would seem pretty flat taken from the second floor because there wouldn’t be the groundedness that comes from being more in line with the action.

To close off the roll, I just want to talk about the HOT///CAKES picture in the bottom row right in the middle. This is what I’m talking about in terms of spatial and focus separation. It’s very clearly focused up front on the guitarist with a significant amount of focus falloff moving across the frame. That said, it’s got enough going on to the right of the frame that your eyes wander that way and don’t tunnel solely on the guitarist. Between the lights, vocalist, and bassist, there’s more than enough to pull your attention into the fuzzy space.