Andrew St. Clair

After walking around a desolate Coney Island earlier in the day, I made my way to Williamsburg to catch Harvey Milk at Union Pool. It was my first time shooting at Union Pool and I really like the layout. Nice spacious bar area, a backyard garden complete with a Taco Truck and a wading Pool that doubles as a BBQ pit in the colder months. The theater is a third area separate from the other two that holds about 200 people. Oh, and the theater has very dim lighting (why am I not surprised). Dang.

As I always do, I got to the venue early so that I’d be able to get a prime spot in the front. However, sound check seemed to be running late and an 8PM door time was moved up to 9:15PM. So, I killed some time and chatted with some audience members and, at one point, bass player Stephen Tanner, who admitted that he only got a computer 6 months ago. I gave him a business card which had a picture of Starscream on it. I told him how Damon Hardjowirogo seems to always overload at least one Game Boy during a set and how they have to stop playing because of it… and that when it does, the crowd goes wild. He found that pretty amusing.

After the band Occultation played (who were pretty good), I suddenly found Chad Batka who shoots for the New York Times next to me. He had 2 Canon bodies and a bag full of lenses. I could sense that he wasn’t having the easiest time with the very dim light. He would tell me after the show that he was shooting at ISO 5000 with his Mark IV. I, on the other hand do not have a full-frame camera sensor, had zero patience, and quickly broke out the speedlight when Occultation played. Using a bounce flash isn’t nearly as intrusive as pointing it directly at the performers for an entire show (which I will hopefully never have to do). Not to mention that Stephen took off his Del Taco jacket and used his mike stand as a coat rack, blocking many an audience member’s and my photographic line-of-sight (he took it down… eventually).

After 30 minutes, I moved from the front to the balcony next to the soundboard to get some big ol’ shots of the stage and the crowd. While I was shooting in the front, I got best results at 1/4 Sec, f/2.8 & 250 to 500 ISO (depending who on stage I was shooting). Between both bands, I took 203 shots, so I had it pretty easy when it came to photo editing and building the set for Brooklyn Vegan, which you can check out here.