Chicago loves Sick Puppies, so it’s always a treat when they make the trek from Australia for a show.
Despite having run into Sick Puppies at Angels & Kings before, I’ve never seen them live. I was missing out, because they are fantastic. Sometimes it’s hard for a three-piece to both entertain and make music that sounds full, like a recording, but they did both. Very talented, and from what I’ve seen of them at A&K, and heard, they’re also super nice, which always makes me like a band even more.
Shooting Notes
You might notice that there is an abundance of photos of bassist Emma Anzai and drummer Mark Goodwin, but only a few of vocalist Shimon Moore. This is because there was a large object (humidifier? fogger?) blocking the pit right down the middle, and obstructing most of the view to the other side of the stage. I was on Emma’s side (Mark was pretty much dead center), and was really only able to get a few shots of Shimon when he popped over to my side of the stage for a few moments. While kind of annoying, that’s part of what concert photography is about – adjusting to unalterable conditions and making it work. For a less powerful/energetic band, the obstruction might have been more of an issue, but Sick Puppies is so much fun to shoot that I hardly missed the other side of the stage.
The moody smoke was interspersed with bits of white light for this set, which is one of my preferred light set-ups. Aside from only being able to cover one side of the pit, the only other difficult part of shooting this set was keeping up with Emma. She is one of the most active bassists I’ve shot in a long while.
I used the 70-200mm and 24-70mm, and stayed mainly around 5000-6400ISO, since I had to keep shutter speeds around 1/160-1/200 to compensate for the fast movement. Aperture was f/2.8 as usual.
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Don’t you love it when you run into an active bassist? It makes for some fantastic shots, the ones of her in this set are my favorite. I love how her hair is like another character itself in some of these.
Comment by Kristan 02.24.10 @ 12:49 pmLeave a comment