Is pretty bloody steep…and P and I have been in the thick of it. Little did we know that his innocent comment to me at Lanka Fest when we met only for the second time, asking if he could assist me at my next shoot would have lead to where we are now. 

From a small outing to Santa Monica for some street shooting we moved onto an abortive attempt at being ‘official’ photographers for the Lanka Day at Santa Monica. Though this didn’t go as planned we still had a blast, P especially got some winning shots with N’s Xti and my 70-200mm F4 L. Then through the usual Sri Lankan randomness we got our first ‘gig’ which we initially thought was to assist the photographer handling the Iraj and Ranidu concert in Long Beach. We were both perturbed to turn up and be told by A that he was too busy with organizational headaches and we were essentially on our own. A conundrum since I had never shot with a flash before and P hadn’t either. 

Some pointers, much experimentation and a Canon 5D in P’s hands and we were off, working the crowd, running around in front of the stage, behind the stage and all sorts. It was all learning on the fly as never before…in the deep end with nary a life vest to be seen. P came off the better man and he got some absolutely amazing shots, I seemed to lose my mojo somewhere as the cheap batteries that had come packaged with my 430ex started packing up. A desperate rush to get workable batteries threw me completely off my dial and though I managed a few decent shots I washed out. But then one must fail to learn to succeed I thought as I consoled myself with the few good shots and admired (a bit enviously to be true) the brilliant stuff that P had shot.

What neither of us had really bargained for was the vast amounts of post-processing, backing up and watermarking that producing the final package that was required involved. Also once the ball started rolling it didn’t stop with a party starter friend of mine calling me up and requesting my presence at a club in Sunset to shoot Lucid Dreams for a 30 minute set. With some valuable lessons in mind such as shooting in RAW, a greater understanding of the M mode and some high capacity batteries the two of us headed down to the Roxy last Friday, P with my 17-40L in hand and me with my 50mm 1.8.

Never have I had such an adrenaline filled 30 minutes (well I have but not for awhile). Once the boys got on stage and started rapping both of us were in the crowd, on stage, ducking and weaving, composing, recomposing, chimping, changing shutter speeds, dialing up and down on our flashes and shuttering away. I still have little idea about what their music was about because I was on my own high. Over 300 pictures in 30 minutes and my arms were aching from constant moving around trying to get that perfect image, Paper with his hat on, the girls in the crowd, Love crooning away, everything had to be immortalized.
 

The crowd going wild

There was a moment of humour once their set was done, I took a picture of the above two fine young ladies and moved over to have a quick chat. The Asian one asked how she could get copies of the pictures to which I graciously responded by handing her my card and telling her to drop me a mail. As I was going to take a few more pictures of them and close the deal P bumbled in like an eager puppy, tongue practically lolling out, handing out cards and flashing like crazy. Kids I tell you, completely ruined my set-up…but eh…not a big deal and it gives me something to take the piss out of him every now and then. 

Of course as usual post processing was a bitch and has to be stuck in between work, gym, getting my car maintained, a sorry excuse for a social life, recovering from hangovers and of course sleep. We finally got some pictures out to C today and he wants us for another show in Malibu. On top of that we have other gigs on the way, the Red Bull Air Races on Saturday in San Diego and all kinds of fun things in the pipeline.

When the ball is rolling, gotta keep it going.

A millisecond later and this would have been an absolutely beautiful image. I still like it though!