Aria Sharp!

Last night I got the chance to see the band Aria Sharp for the first time. I had gotten a press pass to shoot the show from their lead singer, whom I had met at CONvergence a couple of weekends ago. It was great, and was definitely worth seeing.

From start to finish, they showed a polish, a rehearsed synchronicity that I generally only see in a band that has been together for years and have really worked out all of the kinks in their set. Imagine my surprise when I learned that this was their very first show! Needless to say, I was extremely impressed. Their music was wonderful as well, I would describe it as maybe "Drain STH meets Collide", my companion Joe (who is a bit more cynical about these things) said "I was thinking 'pfft Evanescence', until the guitarist really started hitting some shit.". We were both very impressed.

I hear that they are going to be playing a show on August 22, but I'm not sure where. When I hear where, I'll post it here because their show is worth seeing, honestly. Don't take my word for it though, go over to their Myspace to hear a preview of their album and keep abreast of their schedule. In the meantime, enjoy the photos I took of their very first show.

The full set is here.

My Last Day

Well, today, July 20, 2007, is my official last day of "work". I've loved working at Rockabilia, but from now on I'm no longer a "Photoshop Expert" and will now be known as "Full-time Daddy". I've really been looking forward to this for some time, and I can't believe that it's actually here! Not only will I be spending most of my time with Inara, this will also allow me more time to work on my photography. Hopefully I'll start making enough money where I won't be a kept man entirely, but for now Danielle is going to be bringing home all of the bacon. This is super scary and super exciting at the same time.
I can handle all of the household chores save for one: cooking. I'm definitely going to have to work on that because as it is right now, sandwiches, microwave burritos, frozen pizza and cereal will get fast very quickly. :)

Also, I'm going to very quickly appreciate my Netflix membership. Wish me luck!

Yay! Finished CON!

Over a week later, I finally finished work on the CONvergence 2007 images. I got a lot of great ones this year, and had a lot of fun with it. Originally I started editing them with an eye toward keeping them "straight from the camera", but after a little bit I realized that it's not often anymore that I get to shoot something that isn't an assignment someone is expecting the images from, so I decided to just fool around with them. That's why you're going to see a lot of heavy stylization on these, it was great just messing around with them. Don't be surprised if I revisit them for a later update as well. They're fun to edit, I love cosplayers!

I can't wait until both next year's CON, and the newly created Kakkoi|Con (I'm their official staff photographer!), the ad for which you can see to the right (if you're seeing this post on Photosynthetique). You should check out the site, it's going to be an Anime-focused convention, but there will be plenty of other attractions!

Don't be surprised if I come back and post more photos here either, there's just so many that I love that narrowing it down to just a couple for this post has been exhausting.

I started editing the pictures from Convergence 2007 last night and got through most of Friday night. There are so many great images here that it's hard to just breeze through them like I can with other events. So if you're reasonably sure that I took a picture of you, just hold tight and it will likely go up in the next day or two. You can see the ones that are done here.

Happy 4th of July a week late!

I was so behind on image editing that I didn't even get to my 4th of July pictures until last night! I hope everyone had a fun, safe holiday. I didn't get very good fireworks images this year as I decided to spend it with my family instead of running off to find a hill to shoot from. It was definitely a great time and Inara was surprisingly tolerant of the loud noises and late night, all the way up until some guys threw a strip of Black Cats (or something similar) only a meter or two behind us.

Ashley Rukes Pride Parade 2007

This one's a couple of weeks late, but I just finished posting the entire set of images from this year's Ashley Rukes Gay Pride Parade in downtown Minneapolis. It was another great one, with a much larger contingent of politicians and churches this year which is pretty heartening. Al Franken was a huge hit, spurring a spontaneous standing ovation just running by. As always PFLAG stole the show, getting more audience response than anyone else. It's amazing how effective a sign with a simple message of love can be.