A quick excursion into my metal history: I believe it was 1989 or 1990: my Dad took me to visit friends (of his) and they lived in a small apartment. There was an older kid there (he must have been about 16 and I was 13) and as we arrived he was just putting down the headphones and removing an LP from the only stereo in the place which was in the living room - I guess his parents had told him to clear up. So I asked what he was listening to only to get a disdainful "you wouldn't like it" from him. I pressed on. Eventually he told me it was "speed metal" and it's not for me. One more push and he said he would let me listen, obviously hoping for a reaction of horror and disgust.

It was Annihilator's Alice in Hell. And it blew me away. I sat there and listened to the whole record while the social call happened around me. My love for this kind of music was born!

On the 20th February 1991 I went to see Judas Priest at the Bank Austria Zelt in Vienna, the only reason being that Annihilator was opening for them. (On a side note: the other opening band was someone completely unknown... Pantera... they dominated that night, I can tell you that!) Annihilator were awesome - and really I can't believe I haven't gone to see them again since then.

I didn't miss the chance to revisit memory lane last night and it was certainly worth it. Only one original member of Annihilator remains, the rest of the guys could be his sons. A great set of old songs mixed with the ones off the new album provided a filled ((szene)) with some great tunes to thrash to. It really was like the old days, the place was filled with long hair and jeans jackets with patches on them (I wish I could find my jacket, I believe my Mum destroyed it at some point and is now claiming she doesn't know where it is). Oh, and I got a couple of shots as well. Full set here.

My friends from Archetype Apparel (check out www.dresslikeasir.com!) have once again come up with some cool new stuff and so we did a quick shoot at home with Nana and Chris who had answered a facebook call for models. Since I didn't have much time and the clothes are the main subject, I decided for a simple white background and high-key look. Luckily the boys from Archetype are also fans of non-standard looking pictures so I gave them an extra soft portrait look. Here are a few shots that were used to build the preview banner:

And here's a shot that shows the white background set up in my living room, the hairlight in a softbox, my daughter's rocking horse which is hiding the background light on the floor and Nana wearing one of the new Kiwi sweatshirts.

The EOS-M really has been a revelation for me. It has the manual settings I know from my larger Canon EOS cameras but is small and unobtrusive. Anyway, I have been shooting in jpg and with pre-defined picture styles recently in order to avoid processing altogether. I go for a contrasty monochrome in 16:9 - to me there is a certain movie-like quality in the pictures that I get. One from today which I particularly liked was shot at the Albertina museum in the Vienna city center. The escalators going down to the contemporary exhibition are so nondescript and clean at this point that I initially ignored them. I did notice a large white light wall at the top of them though and from the bottom I thought I could get a nice shot as long as there were no people on them. I then set the camera to overexpose and the live preview gave me the idea that this could look good if I overexpose extremely. Here's the shot, straight out of camera (SOOC):

I had been looking forward to seeing Baroness live for quite some time and so with much anticipation I got to Arena quite early last night. I had listened to about 30 seconds of one song of the opening band Royal Thunder so I wasn't really sure what was awaiting me. Well, with a perfect combination of heavy guitar and bass, hard drums and a mix of melodic and haunting vocals, Royal Thunder certainly has a new fan. I listened to their recent album CVI four times in a row today and can really recommend them! Unfortunately the lighting was not really up to much for the first couple of songs so I didn't get the best set of pictures - but I resisted the temptation to convert them to black and white because there's a couple of nice ones in there. Full set here.

Baroness themselves opened with the awesome "Take My Bones Away" and brought a set that just blew me and about 500 others away. They play with such vigour and joy and the energy really explodes off the stage so that everyone, even right at the back, is fully immersed. Their live sound is superb, the songs sounding just as good as on the album and they add enough movement to make it a full-on show, although I would say it is mostly the guitarists John Baizley and Peter Adams doing the heavy lifting there. I was beginning to think they were a little quiet when it came to talking to the crowd just when they started interacting more about halfway through the set. Some nice, personalized comments about Vienna and their experiences here made everyone feel like they were friends - and that continued after the gig when they walked around in the crowd and merch area. What was really great was the thought they had put into the encore: playing 3 songs off their old albums which complemented all the newer stuff they had played during the main set. I had some fun processing the pictures, hope you like them! Full set here.

Christmas will bring the Advent markets to the melarium and a little advertising is necessary. My friend Roland needed a picture to put in various media and the idea was to bring across a warm cosy atmosphere inside but have the bee products in the foreground. In order not to have to mess about with the colours too much, I faked a cool white balance with the camera by shooting a test shot through a blue gel. I then used the gel on the flash for lighting the products and thereby had a warm background but neutral foreground. Not sure which picture will make the cut but having high resolution certainly helps as any crop can be used!

So I went to play wheelchair rugby with my friend Shadi and his team at the rehab center Weisser Hof up in Klosterneuburg yesterday and had a really great time - apart from the fact that my arms and shoulders are hurting something horrible today...

Anyway, I also shot a couple of portraits and did something completely new for me: used my itty bitty EOS M with the 22mm pancake lens which translates to 35mm. I had the 90EX Speedlight mounted on the camera and used it to trigger a 600EX-RT at camera right which I had put a blue gel on to get a harsh and direct light. I wanted the gym in the background underexposed but visible and I wanted the fluorescent lighting to shine through a little.

I used Nik's Color Efex Pro to run a bleach bypass and a blur filter for the edges.

I dialled down the flash slightly for this second one and let more ambient in, but ran the same processing on the image. I like both of them though!

What I learned though is that I will be taking my EOS M with me on trips as a travel camera but I won't be giving up my ability to use off camera flash. Since I don't want to travel with the 600EXs, I will look at getting two cheaper slave flashes to have with me. Throw in a set of Strobist gels and the whole kit still fits in my laptop bag!

enlight photo came to my attention as I was looking for better hotshoe adapters to hold my new Canon 600EX RTs. They're expensive hotshoe flashes so I don't want them falling off light stands due to me being cheap and trying to use the standard Canon adapters delivered with the flash. The frioTM coldshoe adapters are simply awesome and well worth the moderate investment. I feel really comfortable using them on light stands or my Gorillapod - there is no doubt as to the safety of my flashes in my mind.

Here's a pic I took yesterday of Patrick and Carina with a two light setup: the primary flash was shot through an umbrella and gelled orange to give it a bar/cafe feel - the secondary flash was used as fill and shot up at the white ceiling of the cafe we were in.

And here's a quick pic of the frioTM in action!

I'm changing to blog format from the boring old page where I was laying one article on top of the next one. I have kept all of the old posts starting with January 2013 here. The stuff before wasn't really worth keeping I think...