Day 248

248/365, originally uploaded by Aaron LaRue.

Today I shot the UCSB Battle of the Bands, where students compete for a spot in the line-up at Extravaganza.  

Extravaganza is a huge concert that the school puts on and it's awesome. Every year they have a student band as one of the openers, and they decide it by having a BATTLE! I was actually really impressed, all of the bands that played tonight were really good. The band in this picture, Sprout, won, and will get to play in front of a huge crowd in May. They were actually my favorite of the night too. They sounded like CCR, had an electric organ, back-up dancers/singers, and the guitar player had long hair and a ridiculous mustache, which sealed the deal in my book.


I'm slowly learning how to shoot concerts. I can't normally use a flash in these situations, so I'm left to deal with high ISO levels, which kind of sucks. When shooting something like this, you are totally at the mercy of the light technician who is working the show, so you have to do a few things really well. First, you need to be able to change your shutter speed, aperture, ISO, and exposure compensation really quickly and basically without looking because you don't want to take your eye off of the eyepiece. Which leads me to number two, you have to be ready for the moment. I try not to take my eye out of the eyepiece, but I also try to shoot with both eyes open. This lets me see my frame while scanning the rest of the stage to see what else is going on. If you can be quick, and can be aware, you'll get good stuff. Still, I've blown some really good shots because I wasn't scanning everything, or because I couldn't change my camera specs quick enough. Definitely still a learning process, but I'm getting better at it. And after doing this, I'm pumped to shoot Extravaganza!