Austin Vittles

I want to share a photo with you from the Crooks show at Emo’s a few days ago.   These guys were fantastic, I greatly enjoyed their sound, especially the trumpet player (Sam Alberts) who also busts out a banjo when he doesn’t have a guitar strapped on.  Very entertaining, and excellent music.  Nice job guys!  I will definitely hope to make it to your next gig!

I wish I could have walked away from that show with more photos to share, but there was really only one that turned out, out of about 40 shots.  I found the lighting to be extremely difficult, but of course I’m still just a novice…

Josh Mazour of Crooks

Here’s a photo of Henna Chou of Many Birthdays playing at Emo’s on Jan 3, 2010.  They were really fun to watch and they have an amazing sound.  I was hoping that more photos would turn out, and I took quite a few, but I’m just not there yet.  I will definitely try to shoot this band again, and I recommend making it out to one of their shows as soon as possible.

Henna Chou

There is an excellent interview with the band at Destroy All Monsters, a fun Austin blog with lots of local film reviews and other goodies.

Free Week in Austin is great.  It’s almost too good to be true, actually.  I even a feel a little guilty for going to so many free shows and taking advantage of the opportunity to practice photography without paying for more than a couple of drinks.  And it’s a great time to discover new local bands, bulk style.

I have been going out all week taking pictures of bands at various Free Week venues and I am finally starting to feel a bit more comfortable with my camera and my ability to capture something worth looking at during poorly-lit live performances.  In case you don’t already know, I suck at live music photography, but I’m trying to get better, and I really enjoy doing it, so I’m going to keep trying until I figure out how to get nice shots at live events in dimly lit bars and venues.  And I am going to subject my readers to all my mistakes and practice runs.  Sorry!

Anyway, Sunday night I went to Emo’s to see a series of bands I had never heard of.  Western Ghost House was first on the stage, and they were great, really fun to watch and they have a great sound.  If you get a chance to see them play, I highly recommend it!

The photos.  I am not happy with these.  I kind of like the picture of the drummer, but I don’t like that I had to ditch all the color in order to make it acceptable.  The other two photos are very disappointing to me, and I am determined to learn from these mistakes and figure out how to better deal with that type of lighting in the future.  It was the inside stage at Emo’s.