guitars | PK PERSPECTIVE

location:- The Twa Tams Perth

His Guitar may have had problems but he was still happy to play!

R.P.G (Rabid Punk Guitars) were doing a warm up gig for The Curtains at the Twa Tams pub in Perth which is known for supporting local bands. So after sharing a bottle of wine with Fee we headed down to the Tams and while she bought me some strange concoction of a drink which included red bull, which I’m not allowed to drink normally for the sanity of those around me, I went and checked out the stage and crowd form the back of the stage. The band were just setting up and the crowd of avid fans were in place so after checking how long I had before they started I joined Fee in the beer garden and drank the bizarre 2 part drink. It all got a little vague after that!!!

As the 1st song was playing we headed inside and squeezed through the crowd and the small brawl (it was a punk gig after all) and my lens cap got knocked off and I had to risk my hands under shuffling feet to retrieve it, but we made it more or less in one piece to the front where I set up to do my thing! Through the tipsy haze (Fee was still plying me with drink) I managed to set up my camera to all the right setting for a change, in raw to give more flexibility in processing, manual mode to control F number and shutter speed (low F for tight depth of field and shutter about 100th to capture without blur) and ISO 1600 to make most of the awful light. Has no pub in Perth got proper lighting for their stages? Remote flash was set and ready with good new batteries and all went pretty smoothly. It was a short set but a great one with all their own songs and the crowd loved it, even if there were a few tuning problems with the lead guitar. Goes to show a successful gig is more than just the music, it’s the atmosphere and the show as well and as always RPG provided this with their great energy and obvious love of the music. Dodging the occasional dancer, or is that moshers, I breezed around the stage and balanced the flash on whatever I could find (including Fee) and even stood on a chair to get the perfect shots. And I must admit I’m happy with what I got.

After RPGs set we took a break before the main band and as we met an old friend of mine and got talking we kinda lost track of time and next thing we knew it was after midnight and The Curtains were finishing up. Ooops, sorry guys! But all in all a good night with good company and great music and some good photos, just wish I could shoot them somewhere with decent lighting for a change! If you want to find out more about RPG you can now find them on facebook, just look up RabidPunkGuitars there.

Rabid Punk Guitars doing their thing

Corinna hotel Sat 19th June

There’s a condition at work which we call “nightshift brain”and this is when during or after working waking nightshifts your brain gives up its higher levels of functioning due to the tiredness, isolation and general messing about of the body clock. The phenomenon can last for a good few days after the last nightshift. Now due to doing 4 waking nights, finishing on the wed morning, then doing a sleepover shift (which is a late shift, sleep at the service then do an early the next day) on Friday, by Saturday my brain had pretty much given out. This all made my shoot of the wonderful R.P.G on Saturday a bit of a challenge.

Although I was faultly RPG weren't

They were again playing the Corinna Hotel in all it’s dodgy glory. This time they had a warm up act, Patrol, who were just finishing when I turned up. They did sound very good and everyone gave them a glowing review. Sorry I missed you guys! As always the light was shocking there but this time I had come with a plan. I had used coloured acetone to make filters that fit on the flash, ingenious! They would of worked really well too if I didn’t have so many problems with the flash gun. I had put in cheap batteries which the flash just ate through at an amazing rate and only with very fresh batteries did it work to it’s best. Lesson leaned though, you get what you pay for! This along with my faulty brain that set the camera up with ISO 100 instead of 1600 and at no point figured this out until the next day, made for a challenging shoot. But through the technical difficulties and the rather rowdy crowds (my thanks to Pauline and Sandra who acted as my bouncers and stopped me getting stood on even though it put them in the line of danger) I managed to get some great shots. Again I also used rear flash and slow shutter approach and as the band and crowd were quite lively I got some good movement shots. I did need to do quite a bit of photoshop work to lighten them up though, knew I should of worked in RAW format so I could play around with exposure and that and due to the low ISO and hence darker shots I did tend to transfer a lot of shots in to black & white to get the contrast and detail I wanted.

Although I was not at my best, RPG were. They played their hearts out and put up with the drunks wondering onto the stage area and were gratified with proper screaming fans and demands for more. It sounded like and felt like being at a proper concert, apart from the venue. I’m sure if they did a CD it would do very well, who says you have to be in your youth to make it big in the music world!!!!

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Punk at the Tams

Rabid Punk Guitars