Andrew St. Clair

I’ve shot Xylos a couple of times in the last year and have gotten friendly with them over the last year. They are always asking me to shoot their shows and always have complementary things to say about my pics… which gives me a little incentive to shoot them. I caught Oberhofer at the BV Day Party during CMJ, but had yet to see Tapes ‘n Tapes. So, off I went to the concert with my friend Patty Scull (who was covering it for TheJealousLover.com) and mutual friend Tom Flacshen. As a bonus, Ryan Muir was there shooting for Metromix.

The lights at MHoW were their normal dim selves. For Xylos I was able to shoot at 1600 ISO, but for Oberhofer and TNT, I ended up shooting at 2000 to 3200 ISO with my D300. Usually I don’t go higher than 1600, but I’ve come to accept that if I don’t go higher in some cases and just deal with the noise/grain, that I’m not going to get the shot at all.

For the most part, the noise wasn’t horrible, but with a D700 I’d get better results. Noise can be reduced in Lightroom or Define 2.0 but only to a certain extent. Otherwise, your images will have a very soft look, so there is a fine line to navigate. Besides, classic rock photographers had to deal with film grain, so if they can do it, I can do it.

For Tapes ‘n Tapes, I shot the first 4 or so songs and got what I wanted and got to hang out for the rest of the night. Lighting challenges aside, it was a pretty easy shoot. Tapes ‘n Tapes sounded great. Their set seems to get louder and heavier as the night went on and came to a close with a song off their new album, ‘Freak Out’, as their encore.

After the show, I hung backstage with Xylos, had a fun and revealing chat with Brad Oberhofer about BV commenters and got to meet Josh Grier & Jeremy Hanson of Tapes ‘n Tapes and talked about fine-tuning set lists & touring and other stuff. It was a fun night. Check out the coverage on BrooklynVegan.com

On a side note: Every time I visit that area of Williamsburg, my cell phone battery drains fast and furious. The signal is so weak, that it’s constantly looking for better signal or switching from 1G to 3G. I would venture a guess that it’s because Verizon Wireless doesn’t care about hipsters. Hopefully, it’s a different story once 4G/LTE is released. But until then, I think I need a spare battery or two.