You haven’t seen entertaining until you’ve seen Foxy Shazam.
I first heard of them when they opened for The Sounds last year, but despite shooting the show, I arrived just a few minutes too late to get in the pit for Foxy. So, when I heard that they were doing their own headlining tour this year, I made sure to shoot it, and I wasn’t disappointed in them. They are a force.
You’d be hard pressed to find another band, that in the course of an hour, did handstands, played keyboards with feet sticking up in the air, broke a mic stand over a knee (then played air drums with the pieces), crawled across stage on all fours, did push ups, jumped like crazy, and a multitude of other crazy things. There is definitely no shortage of energy on the stage.
There are just some bands that everyone needs to experience once in their lives. I have Semi-Precious Weapons, Butch Walker, and Dragonforce on the top of my “amazing live show” list, but after this show, I think Foxy’s on there too.
Shooting Notes
Beat Kitchen is the bane of my existence. So many venues are hard to shoot at in Chicago, but Beat Kitchen is the worst. The lighting is so bad that I actually skip shows if they take place there (which is kind of sad, because I actually like it as a venue otherwise). However, Foxy wasn’t playing anywhere else in Chicago in the foreseeable future, so Beat Kitchen it was.
Foxy moves quickly and sporadically. It’s pretty much impossible to anticipate what they’re going to do next, which would be a challenge in any shooting situation, but even harder when I couldn’t move from my small spot, couldn’t focus due to the low light, and couldn’t use a fast shutter speed to freeze motion properly. So, I’ll admit it – I just shot everything on burst. I knew I was going to have a hideous keeper rate because I had so many elements against me, but sometimes you just can’t practice proper technique.
I was also playing around with panning a bit, which is something I’m not very good at. It did work on a few shots (the first shot below, for example), but I still need to practice to be able to do it consistently.
I shot with two 5D Mark IIs, the 135mm f/2L, the 35mm f/1.4L, and the 16-35mm f/2.8 (but only briefly). My ISO ranged from 5000-12800, with shutter speeds from 1/60-1/160, and aperture from f/1.4-f/2.8 (depending on lens, I shot as wide as I could).
