Music In Motion

A few years ago (around 2005), I lived with a good friend who was in a band. I went with them every time they booked an appearance, and sometimes took my Olympus digital camera. I became friends with all of the band members, and won’t post any names, so they’ll just all be named ‘friend’ from here on

On one of the nights when I had the camera, I decided to start playing with the settings, and discovered something called ‘candlelight mode’. In the years that have passed I have learned that this essentially means long exposure. I still don’t fully understand the ISO or F number.

Anyway back to the point, on one of band nights, we were at a high end bar in Sydney, and there was a cabinet with ‘candles’. So I decided to fool around with candle mode. I didn’t keep the first few shots but I definitely liked them. Here’s the fist shot I kept of a band member:

Even on the small view screen from the camera, I could tell that this shot is out of focus, but at the same time, there is something about it, which made me like it.. It’s like a still photo, but you can still see him playing the guitar.

So I decided to continue… Based on the numbers in the camera files, I took a few shots after this, and I was probably trying to get one of my roommate. The first one I kept was this:

While unaware of the technical photography I was doing, I was enjoying the results, so I kept going. There was something I liked about this out of focus shot which somehow captured something.

I decided to take a few more shots of my this friend, who was the bass player. According to my camera file names, I took another 27 shots, which I didn’t keep. It’s been more than 10 years but I do remember deciding to ‘follow the instrument’, so I changed the way I took the shots.. I then came up with this shot of the same friend, which I prefer:

At this point, I felt like the photos looked kind of cool in a music sense of way, so I kept going. I decided to try and get shots of the other band members too!

Fortunately they had a decent set time that night, and favorable lighting. Anyway after learning the ‘follow the music’ technique, I decided to keep taking shots. I moved on to my drummer friend:

It looks like more than your eyes want to see, but that’s what drums are all about. Feeling not quite so happy as I was before, I still wanted to continue, so I took more shots until I got one of the singer. I’m sure you’re wondering what it was, so here you go:

This photo doesn’t look quite like I thought it would, but hey, it’s been a decade, and I am into music….

Every song, no matter how good or bad, must come to an end, and I have kept things in order. Here is the picture I kept of my friend the lead guitarist:

This concludes my venture into amateur photography and music fandom. I hope it wasn’t a total waste of time :)