Lyve On Whyte and Wunderbar with Owls By Nature

On Friday, October 22, 2010, I showed up at Lyve On Whyte to take pictures of my local favorites Owls By Nature (love you guys!) with Haley Primrose and Derrek Anderson and the Guaranteed. After Jonny vouching for my IDless self, I went in to say hello to everyone. The boys informed me that the night before they'd been asked to play a show at the Wunderbar after Lyve.

They played a fantastic show at Lyve. Haley was wonderful, and OBN of course put on a great show. D.A. & The Guaranteed were alright too, a little old/country for my taste, but by the time they played I was dancing with Pete and Rudy so it didn't matter.

When we got to Wunderbar (some kind folks paid for a taxi for us. Most expensive 3 blocks of my life..) Bootz asked me to run back to grab a snare stand he forgot. After hunting down various member of The Guaranteed and locating the stand, I'd missed half the set by the time I got there. It was alright though. I caught some unwanted shooters (the boys were all verrryy drunk) and spent most of that show dancing. I got some pretty sweet photos there, though. Kris also had a lot of fun playing with my camera and took some really interesting photos with strange light play, but I didn't post those here since I didn't take them.

Haley Primrose at Lyve On Whyte

Haley Primrose

Sean Hamilton of Owls By Nature

Andrew 'Bootz' Barbutza of Owls By Nature

Ian McIntosh of Owls By Nature

Jonny McCormack of Rude City Riot playing with Owls By Nature

Pete Nguyen of The Weekend Kids

Pete & Rudy!

Derrek Anderson and The Guaranteed

Haley Barbutza

Jonny and Sean at the Wunderbar!

Jonny has some fierce poses up his sleeve.

Owls By Nature the Wunderbar in Edmonton, featuring Pete Nguyen of The Weekend Kids on the tambourine, and Jonny McCormack of Rude City Riot on the Sax!

He was so beat after playing 2 sets!

Five Years Further

Alright, I'm a little bit behind, but I've been very sick (kidney infections.. no fun) and busy with work, not to mention how horrible my computer has been acting.

These are the pictures from Saturday, Oct 16, 2010.

Colton, the lead guitar for Five Years Further picked me up to take me to the show at the Taphouse in St. Albert. We hung out at Cam's house for a bit, talked, he showed me the recording studio where they do their stuff, and all of his guitars.
The whole band is pretty sweet, good guys. A lot of fun, and are pretty typical in their mocking sense of humour. But I liked them.
I helped Cam pick out a font for their set list, we chose Papyrus, and he was rather happy with the effect.

I brought my Sony Alpha 100 to this show. It was the first time I'd used it at a concert, and it was a little intimidating bringing that big hunker out. I took it out and was playing around with the settings with the first band, Autumn Portraits, and before they were done their set my battery was already dying (I'd not charged it because it had half battery) so I was a wee bit flustered.
The battery lasted me all of FYF's set though, so I was very happy with what I got out of it.

I need to get more lenses. This one doesn't do much for me, really. It's not badbadbad, but it doesn't work very well when I'm getting in peoples faces.. I tend to lean towards dramatic close up and crazy angles which don't really work with this particular lense. Too bad mom lost my other one. But I'll get more, and for now I'm learning how to utilize this one.
I basically cranked my ISO, I would like to try to find a better way to do it, though, because maxing ISO just winds up with a lot of noise and the pictures are still really dark. Some can be fixed with editing but others not so much.

I'm quite happy with some of the photos I got, though, and the boys were very impressed and have asked me to come take more for them this weekend at Lyve.
My plan is to go to Lyve, take pictures of them, then zip over to the Pawn Shop to shoot The Weekend Kids. I think I'll probably miss Audio/Rocketry, but what can you do.. Apparently FYF was supposed to be on this bill originally, which would have been nice, but it should all work out.

I plan on taking lots of pictures of people in their costumes.
If I can't get into one/both of the venues (still have not got new ID. Payday friday. I plan on fixing this.) I'll just walk up and down Whyte and do impromptu photoshoots with people in their costumes. Woot woo!

There were 4 bands playing.. This was the clusterfuck next to the stage. You cant tell how much of a gongshow it truly was, but it was insane.

The Autumn Portrait

Colton Taylor of Five Years Further

Five Years Further

Cameron Boone of Five Years Further

Chris DaSilva of Five Years Further. He's a hard one to photograph, he's so well hidden behind that kit!

Alex of Five Years Further

They had a whole bunch of girls dancing along. Their cover of Shots by LMFAO was FANTASTIC.

Attempt at starting a photography blawg.

As those of you taking the time to look at this will probably know, I am an aspiring photographer. I have much to learn and am still trying to figure out the best way to broadcast my work and connect with more people, get more feedback. I decided that a blog where I could showcase my work would be best  I am still working with a crappy computer, but I will be getting a new one soon, and decided I would like to start this blog sooner vs. later. My goal is to try to upload to it at least once a week with at least 5 new photos that I am proud of. Every day I am going to try to spend sometime working on my skills. Whether it is reading a book about photography, looking at other people's work, or taking pictures. This may be difficult to accomplish for I am going to be extremely busy, but I hopeful that I will make it work.

I do have a deviant art account, which I have been uploading to for some time, 

and I recently made a portfolio on Carbon made. 

I've yet to figure out what will be the best medium for me, but I plan to keep trying them out until I do. 

^_^

About my cameras.

I have a Fujifilm Finepix S1000 that I have been using for the past 4 months or so,

and a Sony Alpha 100, that I was unable to access for the past few years.

My Fujifilm did me well, but has been glitching out a lot. I've been very frustrated at how long it takes me to take a photo with it.

I retrieved my Sony yesterday, and have been trying to refamiliarize myself with the camera, reading onine manuals and taking lots of pictures of my room and other random things. It appears that my mother lost my other lense, as well as my lens caps. I am pissed.

Anyways. I'm rusty with this thing, and it's going to take some time to get used to it again.

Here are the pictures from my first 24 hours with my old camera.

Random shot to see what colours/sharpness is like immediately after retrieving it. It looked very sharp at first.. till I looked at it full size..

My ghetto ass computer, googlin', betchez.

After messing around with my camera for a little bit on my own, Stephanie, Sean and Chris came over. They became subjects to my frustrated attempt to relearn my camera. However, I was comforted by the fact that you can tell quite clearly when someone else was trying to take pictures because it's impossible differentiate anything in the pictures. They are not blog worthy, they will be on facebook though.

Sean Davis

Chris was shenanigating

They look quite at home, don't they..

Steph is silly and I love her for it. I always get fun photos when she's around!

Hanging out with Steph and the boys was great last night. We made some epicly delicious cookies and ate them all quite promptly.

Today after work I wanted to do som practice, and work with focusing. The manual focus wheel on this camera is awfully inconveniently placed..

I thought about going to the fish tanks, but I've done that before. Turned out some gorgeous photos, but I wanted to try something new. I figured puppies and kittens were a good subject. The glass proved to be a bit of a hindrance.. I will try to learn more about overcoming this. My lense proved to be rather inconvenient with this as well, as it was hard to get it to focus in such a close up setting.

These bulldogs were absolutely gorgeous! And sleepy.

The pretty pup in front had such sad eyes. I kept missing her sad looks though. The brindled one just slept except for a few minutes when I took this photo.

This kitten spent most of the time I was trying to take pictures facing the other way. I got her attention my moving my hands in front of the glass. 

This is the chandelier at the top of the escalator to Europa Boulevard. I'm not sure which I like better. This one..

Or this one. I think I like the first one better. Opinions, anyone?

I was messing around with exposure and ISO. Didn't have too much luck, I turned out a bunch of photos that looked pretty much the same..
Anyways. I didn't have much  of a chance to learn how to use the camera when I got it, let alone after it being obsolete in a place I couldn't reach it for so long. I cant expect to be turning out gorgeous pictures right away.
Tomorrow I'm going to St. Albert to see Five Years Further play at the Taphouse. Colton has asked me to take photos, and I could potentially be taking promo type photos for the band in the future.
Tomorrow I will go and take photos of their performance, and get to know the rest of the band.
I'm quite looking forward to it, especially because I've yet to take my Sony out to a concert. How sad.
I guess there's a first for everything!

Oh. And for those of you that may be wondering
Portfolio;
www.spritephotography.carbonmade.com
Deviantart;
www.p-ixie.deviantart.com