My last post of shots will be of Amorphis. We skipped the end of Tarot’s show so that we could get Anna a place fairly close to the stage. Hmpf. Almost an hour before Amorphis was slated to start (and several hours before the closing act of Sonata) a bunch of Sonata fans had camped in the front rows. But Anna still got a good spot and I made my way into the pit.
Well, I started going through the KuopioRock pictures in an upside down order. Sonata Arctica was the last performer of the evening (well not quite, since Indica was the last another stage). We’d last seen Sonata when they were warming up for Nightwish in the infamous Hartwall Arena gig of 2004. What can I say, we live in Eastern Finland and generally avoid festivals…
Sonata had a strict limit of shooting three songs from the pit. For some reason, the lighting in the first three songs in these cases tends to be quite dark and heavy on the backlight when compared to the lighting in later songs. Which is why I continued to shoot from the audience.
In the Sonata Arctica forums I read some disappointed comments on the gig from fans (who’ve seen the band play more than enough times). I don’t know about them, but when its the first time of seeing one of your favorite bands for the first time in five years I try to enjoy it to the fullest. And enjoy I did.
In fact, I once again noticed how hard it is to shoot when your singing along – and sometimes even moshing or jumping up and down. As a photographer (and fan) I loved the way especially Tony interacts with audience. And how lively he is when performing – even if the lighting meant that I have lots of shots of a very blurry Tony.
And as an Ibanez and shredding fan, watching Elias from close up was a treat.
One of my best moments of the whole festival after Tony threw the following pose on stage:
As a fan, I acknowledged his interaction by giving him a thumbs up. He answered with the following:
Alas, the shot isn’t all that good since I had to scramble to get my camera back up. But I will always remember the interaction.
More pictures in our gallery.
Well, Saturday’s already two weeks behind us. We went from rocking away to spending the next day at a dog show
(pictures). I have to admit, I was a bit beat.
Once we got home on Sunday I started to clear my memory cards (luckily I took a backup of 2×512 MB in addition to the 10 GB
I was originally taking). I started out with the borrowed 4 GB Extreme III which immediately started to cause problems.
Importing directly into Lightroom kept failing (device disconnected) after importing a varying amount of pictures. I tried
every trick I know and nothing worked…
So in desperation I decided to first empty all of the other cards, which went without a hitch. And at the same time I
noticed a little detail: the 4GB Extreme III is rated at 30 Mb/s where my own 2GB Extreme IIIs are 20 Mb/s. Apparently my
memory card reader overflows with the rate of data and drops out. Or then its my Mac (which sounds odd). But geeking
with the command line and copying files in increments and ejecting the card after each increment (100 pictures each) let me
get all the pictures. All was safe.
And there went the time that I’d allocated for a little nap next Anna. Sometimes I hate computers ;)
All in all, I took 1407 pictures during the day. Maybe a bit too much, but I’ve learned that expressions and lighting change fast and thus taking several shots of any given situation is worth it.
My first cull lead to deleting 194 absolutely useless shots. I kept many that are unsharp etc. just because they are memories for us. I’ve now finally started to go through each band that I shot and make my selections. So stay posted for updates as my editing progresses.
So, I’m finally getting ready to head for the first festival / gig that I have accreditation for. Although in a sense it’s no different from the gigs that I’ve already shot, I’m still feeling more nervous than before. And shooting from the pit will be a new experience. As well as shooting in a gig in daylight ;)
Although the festival began today we’re only going for a day. Nothing good enough today to warrant dragging ourselves to Kuopio on a weekday. For once though, I’m not going to pack my photo gear at the last minute, so I decided to catalog my preparations for future reference. And comments on what I could maybe do better ;)
I guess that about covers everything that needs to be done beforehand. I’ll be packing all the gear in a LowePro Rover AW II which should be comfy enough on my back with the gear and water bottles etc. The following is the list of stuff I’ll be packing:
I think that should about cover it. The 70-200 probably won’t see much use in the pit, but I’ll use it when I’m in the audience. The 18-55 is coming along just in case. I can’t honestly remember when I’ve used it last, but it doesn’t weigh much either.
I’ve also printed out a timetable and map of which stages the bands are at that I want to see (and shoot). There are a couple of other bands that I’ll probably shoot, but not actively listen to (hey, I’m there to enjoy the music ;).