Mest headlined the “One Night Stand” Tour (which also featured the previously blogged about Quietdrive). This tour marks the first time that Mest has been back out on the road since January of 2006.
Mest has a very interesting history, filled with stabbings and side-projects (if you don’t know about it, you should check out their Wikipedia page). They are also originally from Chicago, so I was very interested to see them. This show featured singer Tony Lovato’s brother, Steve Lovato on bass, and Good Charlotte’s old drummer, Chris Wilson.
I wasn’t completely let down – they were entertaining, for sure, but they just didn’t “wow” me. However, I am guessing that perhaps my expectations were too high (I remember the incredible hype around them several years ago), because, for being out the scene for so long, Mest had quite a few fans there, and even more importantly, they had a lot of enthusiastic fans.
Shooting Notes
Mest’s lighting was very “strobe-y” and dark for the first two songs, and slightly more constant, but still dark on the third. It was a drastic difference from the fantastic lighting that I experienced with Quietdrive, unfortunately. There was a lot of intense color, with little front-lighting, and practically no white light.
I kept the same set-up for Mest’s set, as I did with Quietdrive’s – 5D with the 16-35mm, and the 1D Mark II with the 24-70mm. Both wide open with the 5D at 3200ISO, and the MkII at 1600ISO (there is a serious quality drop at 3200 on the MkII, I prefer to shoot at 1600ISO and then push the digital negative if necessary). I tried not to go slower than 1/125; since Mest is a relatively high energy band, I didn’t want to risk motion blur.
The band was fun to shoot when they played the front of the stage, but when they were not vamping it for the crowd, they seemed to either favor planting themselves right in front of a mic, or staying upstage. I found myself getting frustrated with the difficulty of getting a clear shot.
