Some Local Color

Last friday I met some friends at a local coffeehouse where a local band Living Trees was playing - I was mostly there because one of my friends was playing drums with them.  They're kind of an indie/folk/bluegrass group composed of guitar, mandolin, banjo, upright & drums.  It was some interesting & enjoyable music, though the sound quality was a bit muddy and it was difficult to make out the lyrics.  The Acoustic's in-house PA leaves a bit to be desired...and the space itself is a few notches short of "ideal".  It may be for this reason that nothing really jumped out at me musically.  I'd like to see them again sometime with some better audio.

Show Photography in Bad Light

I also, predictably, took my camera along and took some photos of the show.  The lighting in there was terrible - terrible enough that the autofocus on my 50mm f1.4 prime was hunting a lot.  I shot most everything at ISO 1600, 1/200 and f2.8 - and then bumped the EV a full +2.00 and pulled the saturation down in post.  The photos are still dark and noisey, but they're not terrible.  One or two I'd even call "good".  Despite the difficulty, it was a lot of fun.  I'm always looking for new things to photograph.

Pandora's Box

I've been listening to Pandora a bit lately.  I've discovered a few more groups that I've enjoyed (particularly humourous groups like Da Vinci's Notebook, Great Big Sea, Tom Lehrer, Tripod) and some music from groups I already knew that is pretty cool as well (some stuff from The Academy Is, Iron & Wine, and some kids' albums by Barenaked Ladies).

I've been working on some recording & composition when I have the opportunity and inspiration at the same time (which is unfortunately a somewhat rare occurence).  I've come up with some new ideas lately though.

~PS