SOUNDSTRUCK: LIVE!


24th May 2014: SOUNDSTRUCK: LIVE! at Phat Barrels, Publika!


This would be the first time I’d see a 7-band gig at this place.


The opening act was Joanne & Julia. They are twins. Fortunately, Julia wears glasses to help our eyes from getting all cross trying to figure out who is who.


Joanne moves over to the other side to play guitar.


They did mostly covers – Paramore, for example.


Daniel Wong, of Wanted Symphony, emcee and organizer.


Next: Devon C. on guitar, ukulele and keyboard, not all at the same time. I like his ukulele strap!


Daniel Yoong on bass!


The drummer through my main gig lens – the Sony Carl Zeiss Sonnar T* 135mm F1.8 ZA, the choice for low-light telephotography.


As for the wide shot of this crowd, the Sony Carl Zeiss Planar T* 24mm F2.0 ZA SSM covers it. I didn’t use flash at all.


Josh Lim (far right) helped organize this. Should be interesting to see how this goes.


Next band: Amoura.


I could’ve put him in the collage, but the look he gave me warrants his own picture.


Why should I make a collage? It’s generally much more effort to capture the band in a synchronous moment – some members may be more off to one side, and that bothers me compositionally. Meanwhile, the drummer is sometimes hidden… so here he gets his own picture, too.


Then came ICOM star, Daniel Yoong.


On guest vocals, Talitha Tan!


You can also spot Andrew Tan in the background, being the sound engineer, and Barack Obama raising a glass of Guinness.


So as I was saying earlier, group pictures don’t work so well if I want to show the entire band – in this case, only the guitarist is in focus. I could use a darker aperture and get everyone in focus, but they would have motion blur due to a slower shutter speed.


Meanwhile, Talitha is just blur.


Blur, that when presented with the selfie-friendly swivelling screen of my Sony Alpha 99 to take a selfie, she looked at the screen and I had to remind her to look at the lens. Derp extraordinaire!

I regretfully missed the other acts, having run off to another gig in Publika… but that shall be posted soon.

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