Back in the 1990's I really got into music. I started listening to it a lot more and eventually started trying to make some. I went down to OU while my friends back home in Columbus were working on their band and meeting all sorts of new people in the scene. I started hanging out with Rich and Lizard when they moved to Athens in late 1995. They didn't stay in Athens very long but we got to know each other well enough to where we started hanging out in Columbus whenever I was in town. During the break between my Junior and Senior, me, Rich, Jason, and David formed a band called Coronado. Rich and David on guitar, me on bass and harmonica, and Jason on drums. Rich was the lead singer/song writer and David did some backing up on the vocals every now and then. When I came back for my Christmas break we played a couple of shows around town. During that break we were asked to contribute a song to the LFM holiday compilation "An LFM Christmas Krissingle".



It was a cassette with 4 bands doing covers or originals of holiday songs. The bands were Bigfoot - Silent Night, Preston Furman - A PF Holiday, Earwig - Feed the World, and Coronado - Mrs. Christmas. I'm not too sure how many of these tapes were made up but they all sold at an LFM show at Bernies around the holidays. I have 2 copies of the tape but only one with the case and insert. As you can see it's a little banged up but it still gets the job done. I like to listen to the tape each year at Christmas times to relive the memories and to listen to some great music.

The Coronado song we recorded for the tape wasn't the same as we played it live. For the cassette version I played a drum beat on a brown paper bag and a seat cushion. I also did a track on the harmonica. David played the keyboard and Rich played a little (little meaning the size of the actual guitar) acoustic guitar and sang. Jason was at work when we recorded it but he sings at the end when the music fades back in. I think the lyrics to the song are hilarious. We ended up speeding up the tape just a little bit to get a funny kind of comical sound out of our voices. The recording takes a few seconds to kick in but once it does you will be blown away.

I recently saw somebody online asking about the tape and decided that I should probably put the tracks online. Merry Christmas!

Bigfoot - Silent Night
Earwig - Feed the World
Coronado - Mrs. Christmas
Preston Furman - A PF Holiday

too fuuny

I just tried to add a new blog entry about how I haven't been blogging and it didn't save for some reason. Just one more reason why I am not blogging. Lets try this again. Here is a random photo I took recently.

To Flash Or Not To Flash.

I love shooting bands and I love getting my flash off camera. Shooting my good friends band at a small club gave me a chance to experiment with options and to see the different results. Shooting at larger venues doesn't allow you any option but shooting the first 3 songs with no flash but with pretty good stage lighting (which helps a ton).



This first shot was taken of Preston Furman with my 580 EX II rigged up to a Home Depot clamp that was hanging upside down from the ceiling. The power was set at 1/8 and I had the ISO at 400 so I could get some good recycle times and not kill the batteries too fast. I went bare flash instead if using my stofen omni bounce just to see how it looked. The flash was out of the way of all the people there to see the show and nobody really seemed to be bothered by it (or at least never said or did anything about it). I wasn't too sure if it would be wide enough to get all the guys lit up since it was pretty close tot he stage already and the guitar player on the right was pretty far. I thought it worked out fine. The only thing I did when I was only shooting him was adjust my aperture to let a little more light in. I stopped down when shooting the guys individually that were closer. I stayed at 5.6 when I was shooting the whole band. I kind of liked being able to capture people rocking out without any blur. Kind of neat since my shutter speed was sometimes half a second. That let a bunch of ambient and got me cool light trails from the x-mas lights that were strung up. My biggest complaint are the shadows that were cast by the speakers hanging from the ceiling and the shadow the bass player cast on the drummer. Maybe using a second flash could fill in some of those shadows. I will just play around with one flash for now and then figure out how I can incorporate a second light later.



The next picture was taken with the same setup but no flash was used. The lighting at this bar was real bad so I had to crank up the ISO to get as much as I could out of the camera. The ISO was at 1600 and I'm not sure of what the shutter speed was. I had the aperture opened up as big as it would go. These shots are drastically different but not bad either. First off, no shadows. The natural lights look great. Even shooting at ISO 1600 the noise wasn't that bad. I ended up setting the white balance on my shirt since it was gray. I might need to start wearing that same shirt to other shows when the lights don't change. My new little secret/tip for anyone who stumbles upon this blog. The bad part but good part of these natural light shots is the blur. I think it ultimately it works in the end but I could see some people being turned off by the way these look. Nobody comes out perfectly sharp, but I think that once you go blurry you might as well let it go all the way like these did.