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Ben Folds and Lady Danville

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Tuesday night, Amy and I had the pleasure of seeing Ben Folds at the Beacon Theatre in New York City. The night’s entertainment began with an opening set featuring a band new to me, Lady Danville. Though they play instruments, the band was formed out of an a cappella tradition in Los Angeles in 2007 and has been touring with Ben recently.

Not only do they play your standard rock instruments like piano, guitar, and drums, but they rock the glock and uke as well. After the jump, I’ve shared videos of their songs I Want You Back (featuring Ben Folds and the ukelele) and Bed 42 (featuring the glockenspiel). At the concert, I was struck by the band’s harmonies; even with only three voices, they managed to produce rich vocals. I recommend checking them out as they open for Dashboard Confessional on next year’s tour; feel free to leave the show before the main act performs.

Ben Folds is a masterful pianist. This might be news for anyone whose only exposure is his appearance as a competent judge on NBC’s singing group contest show, The Sing-Off.

For those who have never been to a Ben Folds show, there always seems to be a point when there is a lull between songs, and people start shouting song requests. What makes this different than other rock shows is that, through tradition, people often yell a request for Rock This Bitch. From what I can tell, this originated from a concert many years ago during which an audience member randomly yelled out, “Rock this, bitch!” (note the difference in inflection and meaning). Ben Folds proceeded to improvise a song based on this phrase and the song was eventually included on an official recording.

In Tuesday night’s concert, the request for Rock This Bitch was followed by the cliche drunken rock request of Free Bird by Lynyrd Skynyrd. Although he claims to not know the song, he pounded it out on the keys, incorporating the first requested song, in a clever improvisation.

The last time I saw Ben Folds live was several years ago, and I don’t remember if he had his synth keyboard at the time. There were three of these red keyboards on stage, and they produced some amazing sounds. Searching the internet, I was able to find a photograph of the set-up that had enough detail to make out what it is. Along with his piano, Ben plays a Nord Lead 2 keyboard, although the branding has been somehow modified to appropriately read “Nerd Lead” instead of “Nord Lead.” I have found the next musical object of my desire.

His latest record, Lonely Avenue, featuring lyrics by author Nick Hornby (Juliet, Naked, About a Boy, Fever Pitch, High Fidelity) is really growing on me.

One annoying aspect of the concert was the security. There was no announcement regarding flash photography or video recording, but concert-goers should assume that this wouldn’t be allowed. Since we were in the fourth row of the orchestra seating area and on the aisle, we were close to the security guard who was sitting at the lip of the stage in the aisle, facing the audience. Every three minutes he stood up to reprimand one of the same four people in the immediate vicinity who were recording videos with compact digital cameras.

Of course, without stealth concert recorders, those willing to put their lives at risk through copyright infringement for the sake of sharing music, I wouldn’t be able to share the videos below.

Keep reading for some videos.

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Ben Folds and William Shatner

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Musician Ben Folds, one third of the former trio Ben Folds Five (and medium format photographer), must be BFFs with William Shatner. The former captain of the Enterprise teamed up with Ben for the musician’s side project, Fear of Pop. Shatner has a distinctive style of singing that most people would not call “singing.”

Some time after this first collaboration, William became the spokesperson for Priceline. In one commercial, he played against an evil William Shatner, with the requisite goatee, reminiscent of the archetypal evil twin Spock in the classic Star Trek episode, “Mirror, Mirror.” But more importantly, one commercial featured Shatner “singing” with piano accompaniment. The piano was manned by Ben, practically unidentifiable in comparison with the legendary Shatner. The first time I saw the commercial, I was unaware of the actor’s relationship with Ben Folds and the combination struck me by surprise.

William Shatner is now continuing his domination of television with a show I expected to be horrible: “Shit My Dad Says,” the show spelled, “$#*! My Dad Says,” and pronounced, “Bleep My Dad Says.” How good could a television show based on a Twitter feed really be? Well, it’s not so bad. In fact, a recent episode featured a good criticism of self-help gurus — people for which I, like the writers of this episode, have little respect.

The best part of the show is that the theme music and all of the interstitial music is performed by Ben Folds. Check out the short opening credit sequence after the jump. The full song, “Your Dogs,” is on Ben’s latest album and collaboration with author Nick Hornby, Lonely Avenue.

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TheGoodLife at City Streets

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Earlier this year, my first attempts at concert photography produced a lot of garbage. City Streets Cafe in East Windsor (New Jersey) is a bar and restaurant that has become the home for Bryan Douglas’s band, TheGoodLife. The band performs covers of today’s hot hip hop and pop music. I suggest seeing the band this coming Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, at City Streets in celebration of their first anniversary. I’m going to try to make the show, but I’ll be flying back from Los Angeles earlier that day and may not make it in time.

Getting quality photographs is a struggle at this venue. Like most bars, it’s dark, and with the band’s colorful and hyperactive lighting set-up, you never know what color you’re going to get. In the future, I’ll need to look out for stray spotlights.

Particularly with this shoot, it’s evident that the photographer’s job is not done once the memory card is full and the lens cap is placed back on the lens. My first attempts at post-processing shots from City Streets did not result in normal-looking final products. You can see some of the earlier attempts in the Flickr set linked below.

My post-processing skills have continued to improve though I’m still working on developing (get it?) the best methods.

View some of the selected photographs after the jump.

For the full set — not the full full set, because that would be about 1,200 photographs over three nights — take a look at the best 81 shots in this set on Flickr.

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Portraiture Class

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A few weeks ago, I completed a class at the Arts Council of Princeton on portraiture, conducted by Peter C. Cook. Most of our class time was spent talking about portraiture, looking at photographs created by famous and non-so-famous individuals, and critiquing each other’s work.

We did, however, spend two sessions working with a model and one session in the darkroom developing our own black and white photography. This was my first opportunity to work with a model and my first time in a darkroom in the last twenty years. The last time I developed my own work was when I took a short session on black and white photography at summer camp as a kid.

I hope the model, Rebecca, doesn’t mind that I’m posting a few of my better shots (after the jump). My XTi produced the less appealing of all the photographs, so I won’t include them here. The best photographs came from my medium format Holga with black and white film and my Mamiya RZ67 Pro II with color negative film.

For the full collection, view the set on Flickr.

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The Doctor and a Dalek on Craig Ferguson

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Matt Smith is the latest actor to portray the Doctor in the long-running British television show, Doctor Who. He was on the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson the other night, during which the British actor highlighted his insight on American society.

If you know me, you know I’ve been a long-time Doctor Who fan. I didn’t have high expectations for the latest series, but I was pleasantly surprised. Most of the stories were well done.

In an interesting move, speaking to the globalization of television (and to the fact that most American fans simply download the episodes from file sharing services, distributed by kind British folk, so they don’t have to wait too long before seeing the episodes air on SyFy or BBC America or whatever network airs the show on delay), this year’s Christmas special, “A Christmas Carol,” will air on Christmas Day both on the BBC and in the United States.

With the time difference, the five to eight hours between the airing may not be enough time for British viewers to record the show, encode it, and host it on bittorrent, and for American viewers to download it. Speaking of the latest Doctor Who news, the Children in Need special is airing Friday on the BBC, so check your local bittorrent server this weekend (if that sort of illicit activity appeals to you).

Back to the Craig Ferguson interview, which is available here in its entirety after the jump. Here were some of the highlights:

  • Matt Smith places Las Vegas on “the coast.”
  • He expected to meet more bears in the American suburbs.
  • Bow ties are cool.

Apparently, the cast and crew have been in Utah, filming the two-part Season Six premiere, set in the late 1960s. They should have chosen Zabriskie Point.

Here’s the video of the interview with Craig Ferguson. For those who aren’t familiar with either Matt Smith or Craig Ferguson, they are both a bit wacky. The interview is followed by a trailer for the next episode to be aired.

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Central Jersey Walk for PKD

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In early October, I supported my friends Stacey Trzesinski McClain and Randi Trzesinski with their efforts with the PKD (Polycystic Kidney Disease) Foundation. Stacey organized the Central Jersey Walk for PKD as she does every year, and I brought my camera along.

I prefer shooting outdoors if the weather is nice, so this was a good change from the indoor concerts. It was a little chilly that day in Mercer County Park, but it was a successful event with good participation. Walking undoubtedly kept the participants warm. As you can see from the photographs, the walk is a family event. Teams walked together at this event as a culmination of fundraising to support the organization.

My XTi was on call for the event, and I used a variety of lenses (28mm f/1.8, 50mm f/1.4, 85mm f/1.8, 10-22mm, 17-85mm). See some of the results after the jump.

Most of the better photographs are being displayed on the PKD Foundation’s Flickr page.

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Jason Derulo at Rider University

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On October 22, I photographed the Jason Derulo concert (with special guests Super Mash Bros.) at Rider University, hired by Reid Sound. The intent was to take photographs of the event that capture Reid Sound’s motto: “The room comes alive.”

Here are a few of the shots (after the jump). I apologize in advance for the intrusive watermark.

My biggest problem with these concerts is the constantly changing lighting. Reid Sound produces a superb lighting show, particularly at this concert, but the ever-changing color casts make it difficult to come up with images that are exposed correctly, have contrast, or look like they came from Earth. In addition to the tough lighting, the concert took place in a gymnasium, not the friendliest type of room for photography, but probably slightly better than a bar.

The tools I put in use were my Canon XTi, a monopod which was helpful to raise the camera above the audience for some overhead shots using the timer, 50mm f/1.4, 28mm f/1.8, 100mm f/2.8L, and 10-22mm. I met a few students photographing the show for the university, possibly a newspaper, but I never got around to finding out where I could see their photos.

Wide open with high ISO was the name of the game. A firmware hack allowed me to push the XTi beyond ISO 1600 in some cases.

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