For the love of Punk and Photos… by David Norbut
A fifteen year old boy in an apartment building in Tampa, Florida is jumping around his bedroom singing at the top of his lungs making the needle skip on the turntable. Singing every word to an AVAIL record, dreaming it was him singing it to the crowd. Or perhaps just wishing he was in the crowd, longing for an escape. I have spent many a nights packed into firehalls, basements, theaters, you name it. I lived for going to shows. I lived for buying the records, the t-shirts, the patches of my heroes, my favorite bands. My friends and I would drive for miles to catch Fugazi, Hot Water Music, Avail and so many others… There was nothing like buying a record at your local record store never having heard it, this was before the days of Spotify and iTunes. Memorizing every word then seeing and hearing it live and every person in that room is screaming every word with you. It’s a hard feeling to describe and there are so many nights I will never forget. The best part is, now thanks to Spotify and iTunes with a click of the mouse I can be transported right back to those nights.
As long as I’ve been interested in photography I have always felt compelled to shoot music. The music had and still has such a grip on me, I’m easily drawn to capturing it. Trying to capture the right moment in a song or a band or musician in a real moment. It has long been one of my favorite subjects to photograph. Two great worlds combined. There are a few things that directly come to mind when I think about what it takes to capture music or musicians, especially live. The big one is ANTICIPATION. If you know a song, if you know a breakdown is coming or a chorus where the crowd is really coming alive, you know to be ready to get “the shot.” Another big thing is to try to catch interactions between the musicians and even the interactions between musician and audience. There is a beautiful thing going on during a live show, there is a lot of love there. That’s the emotional side of it. In my opinion if you don’t have some emotion or love for what you are doing it’s just going to fall flat. But emotion or feeling aren’t enough. The tool and the technique also play a big role. In this case I’m writing this article about the Nokia Lumia 1020. I want to share my experiments and experience shooting live music with this device. First off and most importantly it shoots better in low light then any other mobile device I have used. We all know when shooting live music that is a huge advantage because 9 times out of 10 shooting music there is no flash photography allowed. Unless of course we are taking photos at punk rock shows, which I just happened to be shooting for this article. Most folks in underground bands couldn’t care less if you use a flash. So during this particular show, I was shooting two bands that had long time friends of mine in each band. So I decided shoot one band with no flash to put the low light shooting to the test and for the other I would fire the flash for each photo.
I shot everything with a Nokia Lumia 1020 through the Proshot app. I found when the light was strong enough the lowlight shooting went well, you have to play with the exposure a bit, but the Proshot app makes that easy. As for the flash, make sure its allowed in the situation and give it a go. Remember anticipation and emotion.
VERSES NARROW, Nokia Lumia 1020, No flash
EASY CREATURES, Lumia 1020, Flash fired
VERSES NARROW, Nokia Lumia 1020, No flash
hear the tunes…
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I drove a few hours down to St. Pete to see Agent Orange a few nights ago, I figured it might be one of my last chances to see em… Man such a good show! I loved seeing all the old punks there, old cats that I knew dusted off their patch and button jackets just to make that show. Good times my man, I totally feel this post.