Digital Kloc Photo Blog

The past year was insane at work. The first five months were filled with work on G-Force, 10-12 hours a day, six days a week. After G-Force, I took a two week vacation and then jumped right into working on Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland. I have been working 12 hour days, six days a week on Alice since September. All this work left me little time to shoot. I shot about half the amount that I did last year, and shot more spur of the moment type things rather than planning shoots.

Here are my top 10 photos of the year, in chronological order:

A friend asked me to shoot his Porsche 996 Turbo.

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Hayley joins The Swellers on Stage

Last week I was fortunate enough to shoot The Swellers and Paper Route when they opened for Paramore at the Hollywood Palladium in LA. All three bands put on great shows. It was the last show of the US tour and the last show with The Swellers, so I stuck around and shot some farewell photos of all the bands together. Paramore is by far the largest band that I have shot and their fan base is much bigger than I imagined. For example, six of the photos I shot after the show are on Paramore’s website. In 24 hours, the photos have a combined 31,614 views. In contrast, my Flickr account which has 1,300 images including scantily clad women, has 27,400 views in a little under two years. Looks like I need a hit record.

Since this was a big show, I decided to rent the Nikon 14-24 f2.8 wide angle lens instead of my usual 12-24 f4. I had rented it before, but wasn’t terribly happy with it. This show confirmed my discontent with the lens. While the lens is tack sharp, the elements are just too big and bulky for a live show. Focusing is fine for landscape or portraits, but when it is dark and you need instant focus, this lens is too slow.  Another photographer traded his 24-70 f2.8 with me for a song and  most of what I posted from the photo pit was shot with that lens.

Jonathan - The Swellers

After the three song limit shooting from the photo pit, I switched to my Nikon 80-200 2.8 AF-S to shoot from the crowd.

Nick - The Swellers

Hayley from Paramore and Nick from The Swellers

Paper Route

Paper Route

Paper Route

Some post-show farewell photos. These were shot with the Nikon 14-24 and a SB-800 on camera.

Farewell photo from the Paramore tour 2009.

Hayley Williams from Paramore and Anto Boros from The Swellers

Next show – Less Than Jake with Fishbone and The Swellers.

I was supposed to shoot The Swellers on their LA date at the Key Club, and although I had a photo pass, they didn’t have an extra space on the guest list for the sold out show. I had rented the Nikon 10.5mm Fisheye lens to shoot the show and had it all weekend. The next day, I grabbed my camera with a 4 GB card and the fisheye lens and went to take my brother Dave out to lunch for his birthday. As it turned out, he was going to San Diego in the Sweller’s tour van for the show that night and returning to LA after the show. I decided to ride along and shoot the show in San Diego, only there was no time to go home and get the rest of my photo gear. Dave’s roommate had an extra 2 GB card, so I was stuck with 6 GB of space and a fisheye lens. With four bands and 6 gigs of space, I had to edit pics in camera, which I hate to do.

Selects from each band after the jump. Read more…