A Long December

Alright, here comes the final barrage of rock-related pictures, from December. I also break the 1 megabyte limit on this one. (Okay, so Counting Crows annoys me.)

3rd December 2005, Homegrown Finale concert, Sunway Amphitheatre


Rahul of One Buck Short with his pretty new guitar.


Republic Of Brickfields do their thing, with a happy crowd. I was standing behind, and on a stairway. To get the rest of the shots, I used a digital zoom of 2.2x (2272/1024) at 1024×768, for a total zoom of 4x optical times 2.2x digital = 8.9x. (I could go 14x if I was at 640×480, but I didn’t need to.) I was in Manual exposure mode, no flash, ISO 50 (it was possible, because there were spotlights), on F5.6 (that was the brightest aperture I could get at full 4x optical zoom) and varied my shutter speed between 1/40 to 1/60 seconds. It was quite necessary, as in Auto or Program mode, it would want to expose at 1 second, which would be too slow, and you’d just get a nice smudgy multicolored blur of rock stars. Digital cameras, even digital SLRs, are not smart enough to figure that the rock stars are already being bombarded with lights, and the cameras want to expose long enough to show the background. So if you think you’re gonna buy a digital SLR and get fantastic shots immediately on Auto, you’d be wrong.

Anyway, for those of you without shutter speed settings, you can just set your EV to -2 to get a similiar effect. Even cheap digicams have this feature, go read the manual, yo. Still too blurry? Crank the ISO up to 400.

It majorly annoys me when people want to get an SLR because they think it will solve their problems. Yes it’s all that, but they don’t even know their own digital camera well enough. Go learn about shutter and aperture and ISO and EV. Google it. If you’re lazy, the least you could do is pick up tips from my blog. I can do this with a RM900 camera, and a little Photoshop.


Trippy.


Oops, I forgot to turn off trippy mode for the intense Syahrul of Love Me Butch.


RAWR that’s more like it. Proper emo from the man himself. Few bands can sing emo without being off tune, and Syahrul pulls it off effortlessly.


ANGER RAGE POWER.


He’s so damn photogenic he is eating up your bandwidth now.


Yeah. Screw you black-nailed, black-eyelined, underwear-showing emo kids. This is the real thing.


Ham of Seven Collar T-Shirt has a funny posture, but it’s cool.


Duan gets a sneeze…


…and passes it on to Adam of Dragon Red, who is instead singing Superpreacher for Deja Voodoo Spells.


Yep, Rithan is not breaking a sweat, shredding away.


DJ Uno of Pop Shuvit on the decks, yo.

In case you’re wondering, yes, they did vote to smash the guitar. It was, of course, a cheap Pyramid Stratocaster clone.

4th December 2005, Dragon Red album launch, Midvalley Convention Center

This time around, I was sitting nearer, so I used 1600×1200, with a digital zoom of 1.42x, making a 5.6x total zoom, F5.6, ISO 50, no flash, and shutter speeds from 1/15 to 1/60 seconds.


Melina of Tempered Mental. They had bright, colorful spotlights for this one, and I was thankful for that.


This was where the stage was set up.


I think she looks good in red.


Hanafi playing for Estranged. He is also the temporary guitarist for Tempered Mental.


KLG Squad, rappers, yo.


Ean, the host. Damn, I love the spotlights, it makes every picture look much more dramatic.


The Bantus Capoeira Malaysia group. I don’t know what the connection was with Dragon Red, but heck.


AAA! Do not flash me! (Capoeira is way cooler taken without flash, at slower shutter speeds.)


Like so.


Fear the Brazilian guy with dreads, for he flies!


Yep, he’s coming for you.


Beware the malodorous foot.


Oh wait, he was wearing shoes.


Hey that ain’t fair! Are you tripping me?


Girls can join the fun too!


YYYEEEAAAHHH. You can tell that he’s enjoying every bit of it.


Uh, I think we’re One Buck Short…


Maybe they could grab some spare change from this breakdancer.


Or this guy, who will flip over three friends for you.


I suspect the little dude has some change. Yeah it’s Adam’s stage buddy.


Tech, guest rapper on Kehendak Naluri, raps like he got the munchies.


Goodbye, ev’rybody, I’ve got to go.

17th December 2005, Rock The World 6, Merdeka Stadium


I took a picture of the crowd, and the only guy who looked at me was the one you were supposed to spot. Where’s Syefri? (He has a full account of all the bands, go read his blog and buy his T-shirt. There are also more pictures at Jenifur‘s blog.)

Now this, this was far from the stage (we didn’t get media passes this time), so I cranked digital zoom to 3.55x at 640×480 for a total of 14x zoom. ISO 50, F5.6, and shutter speeds from 1/250 to 1/400 seconds.


As Yi Jian, Syefri, stim-girl and I stepped into Merdeka Stadium, we were greeted with a familiar rock anthem. Well, familiar to me, anyway. Faith No More – Be Aggressive! They then played Evidence, Easy and Digging The Grave. I was overjoyed! Finally, someone out there acknowledged this band who somewhat pioneered nu-metal and rap-metal, by playing them to the biggest (and only) rock concert (with more than 4 acts) in Malaysia! I should’ve went up to that guy and told him he had a nice shirt. 😀


Mr. Harooon was the usual emcee.


Alda of Cosmic Funk Express funks out the bass.


However, Zack takes the cake with two guitars, played simultaneously! Sadly, their set started with technical difficulty at the worse possible point – the roaring guitar solo introduction. The guitar could only be heard in the second half of the song. 🙁


Hey man, you gotta show me how you do that shiiit.


Frequency Cannon‘s bassist is loving the big stage.


Like, yo, yo yo!


Damn, it’s hot today.


Thank God for the mist.


Rithan rips out solos again, for Deja Voodoo Spells.


This time however, I spot their secret weapon – two people on keyboards! (That explains why they sound more properly produced, even on stage.)


Radhi of OAG, oo-oo-oo-OO.


People were getting tired, so…


Let’s smash this guitar!” And so, he did. Again, this guitar is a cheap Pyramid. Do not be fooled!


Who says rock concerts can’t be cool(ed)?


We eventually retired with the crowd, for the harder bands in the night, and to float in space with Furniture, and sing along to Seven Collar T-Shirt. (This was taken at 7:30pm with a 15 second exposure.)

I didn’t bother with taking pictures because it was too dark and we were sitting too far away. It was time to just do what you should do at a rock concert – rock out.

Was it worth it? Most definitely. RM20 for 17 bands of all genres (pop to ska to metalcore, even a visiting by thrash-metal-in-major-key The Pilgrims, The Killers-like The Times and Kaiser Chiefs-like (reborn) A.C.A.B.) with an actual moshpit! (Unlike those moshpits in regular gigs with only 4 people!)

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