a photo by V Lynn on Flickr.

Today I went to my first show of The Beast’s to introduce myself and start photographing. The show was at Jack Sprat, a café in Chapel Hill. The band hosts a show there every other Tuesday night, sometimes inviting other guests, including rappers and spoken word artists, to take part. Tonight they had invited a local rap artist. The guys in the band were great and were very excited to have me photographing them. I introduced myself to Pierce, the lead singer, Eric on keys, Peter on bass, and Steve on drums.

I started to photograph and was immediately challenged by the lighting. The café was very dimly lit and used red and blue lights for the stage. I set my camera on manual and tried to figure it out through trial and error. I need to start writing down what I am trying because I can’t remember right now. But looking back at my photos, it looks like I became comfortable with a shutter speed of either 1/80 or 1/60 and an aperture at f3.5, sometimes f5, f5.6. The ISO was on 1600 and 800 most of the time.