Ringing in the New Year with the Cool Kid Collective
This was an enormous year for us all, and probably the most significant of my life. To reflect, I went to the bar and got blisteringly drunk.
I went to Mojoe’s first for a bucket of beer and 2 dollar burger, and then walked next door to The Black Flower to watch The Cool Kid Collective play.
I like The Black Flower. Unlike most places on Glenwood, it has class without the reek of snobbery. The owner gave me free Energizers when my camera died, something I just can’t see happening in most of the other bars down there.
I also like the Cool Kid Collective. For the most part I avoid anything live and local, but the Collective, just formed in the past few weeks, breaks your expectations for a local act.
The band started playing and the night ground on into 2009, so I broke out my camera and began hammering drinks.
The band played their first set right after midnight, then DJ Jon C spun a few tracks for the crowd.
DJ Jon C
Celebrations
New Year’s cheers
Kat and Remy
Romance in the crowd
“Backstage”
The band played a second set at around 1:30
Getting into it
There was a lot of energy in this set
Pausing for a drink
After the second set the liquor really began to get its grip on me and I turned my camera more on the crowd. Fortunately everyone was really friendly and nice about letting me take their picture, which isn’t always the case.
Jill and JD
Frankie, Julee, and a friendly guy whose name escapes me
Lovers
As seems to happen whenever I mix my camera and drinking, the night descends into chaos; a blurred mess of images crudely tracing my attempts to catch a cab home.
Lost looking for a cab I ran into these guys
Best wishes at the hot dog stand
Shutting down the bar – my last, unremembered, image before Amigo Taxi took me home.
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01/04/2009
“For the most part I avoid anything live and local, but the Collective, just formed in the past few weeks, breaks your expectations for a local act.”
I would suggest focusing on good local acts rather than local acts per se.
I’ve lived all over the country and every city’s got pros as well as suck ass losers.
Some may have more than others but Raleigh’s suckiness and beautiful moments are not all that uniquely distributed if you want to get statistical about it.
01/04/2009
I will have to go check out the Black Flower. Some of the club owners can be unfriendly towards photographers. Hearing of one that will help a photographer out like that piques my interest in checking the place out.
I’ve only sort of recently gotten into shooting in low light pubs & clubs, and I find the images to be so captivating.
01/04/2009
Magnus – in my experience most pubs/clubs in Raleigh are friendly toward photographers, provided you talk to someone first.
There is one notable exception–Mosaic Wine et Lounge. However nice the establishment may be, the staff there are the most rude and obnoxious lot toward photographers I’ve ever encountered. They won’t listen or talk to you, only give you attitude and deny entry.
Great photos, Sid. Glad to have you on as a contributor.
01/05/2009
Hello, everybody. This is the notorious “club owner” (which, by the way, I find to be an obnoxious title) who was mentioned in passing. Honestly, the more pictures taken in the Black Flower, the better. (I can’t really afford much advertising anyway, so the more you post the more it helps…) And all I did was give the guy some batteries. He was polite, and he was drinking, which is good for me, obviously!! I just bought a 20 pack. I don’t know a soul on this Earth who wouldn’t help out a friendly neighborhood photog if he had a stock like that sitting around. ;-) Hope to see you all out soon. Cool Kids are playing again this Saturday, Jan 10th, if this gentleman’s article sparked your interest. (how about THAT for a shameless plug?) And Sid, the pictures kick ass.
01/05/2009
Some beautiful shots here.
And I know you guys are totally sick of answering the SAME question all the time, but could you post somewhere what kind of camera (and settings) you were using? Us wannabe photogs WISH we could take low-light pix like these.
If you were hosting them on Flickr I would click thru and get the info there, but it looks like you’re hosting the images onsite.
Thanks again for an awesome post.
01/05/2009
Thank you for the compliment. These pictures are technically very simple.
I used a Pentax K100 D Super to shoot with. While it’s a pretty bare bones camera, it’s also the cheapest one available with in-body anti shake and 3200 ISO.
I shot almost all of these with a 50mm 1.7 prime lens with my camera set at 3200. Most of the shots are probably somewhere between 1/8 and 1/60 of a second, the vast majority probably being 1/15 to 1/45.
If you want to take low light photographs, it can be done even if you don’t have anti shake, a high ISO, or a large aperture. Make sure to get your shutter speed as fast as possible for the light, be very careful about holding your hands steady (brace your elbow on a table, or, if crouching, on your knee) and take several shots of your subject. Chances are, one of them will turn out fairly clear. If your subject is moving a lot, like someone dancing, try to time the shot for that moment they pause for just a moment. The best advice to low light shooting – patience, volume, and an acceptance that at least 90% of your images will be unusable :)
Thank you again for the nice words and good luck.
01/07/2009
As a new yet avid patron of the Black Flower I definitely agree with the comment of “classy without the reek of snobbery”. I’ve started to get to know people there and it’s one place that I would definitely take the hike downtown to go to. In the past month because of the Flower I’ve been downtown more than I have been in the past year. :)
Seems like it was a fun time on new year’s though! Sorry I missed it! But you definitely did get some great shots of the night…from a fellow artist kudos on that!
01/08/2009
Lisa Creech Bledsoe – Unless you want to spend thousands of dollars for a digital SLR that has low noise at high ISO settings, film is still king for low light work. And it doesn’t have to be expensive or complicated!
If you’re a competent photographer and comfortable with manual exposures, you can get a Canon EOS Rebel G on eBay for about $40 (spend $10 extra if you can find one with the battery case that will let you run rechargeable AA’s!) and you can get a brand new 50mm f/1.8 lens for it for about $90. For film, there are a lot of choices but if you like black & white, try Ilford Delta 3200. You can actually set the camera for an exposure index of 6400 and just ask the lab to push it to EI 6400 for you when they develop it.
If you want something simpler, I just picked up an Olympus compact 35mm for $13 (shipped!) on eBay that works with film up to ASA 3200. It’s pretty much entirely an automatic camera and the lens isn’t too fast but as long as the folks running the venue have some light on the stage you should do fine.
Some venues are going to have better lighting than others. The worst lighting in town that I’m aware of is at Slim’s. All back lit, no front lighting of the band, almost completely useless.
01/13/2009
The new Cool Kid Collective experiment is the brain-child of former Kepteclectic FrontMan Frankie Goodrich.
It looks like a winner…This group WILL go places.
Raleigh should be happy to have them – before they go national!!