Clint Bierman – guitar
Peter Day – bass/trumpet
Sean Preece – drums
Leon Campos – keys
Brian McCarthy – bari and tenor sax
Dave Grippo – alto sax
Daiki Hirano – percussion
Jeff Vallone – DJ/bass

The show was an electrifying collection of tracks from the album and newer pieces that got the crowd moving from the first note. The energy built with each song and Nectar’s was hopping all night long.

What’s that, you want even more photos? OK – check out the full gallery.

If you missed the show, you owe it to yourself to pick up the album. Want a sample? Check out this video that Matt Kiedaisch put together for the track “Scratchzilla.”

Scratchzilla from Matt Kiedaisch on Vimeo.

I know it was warm out… but running in bare feet in January?  Brrrrrr!

When the final runners came through, the police trail car was playing music through the loudspeaker and people were dancing and skipping their way towards the finish line.

Nice job everyone! Thanks, Run Vermont, for hosting another great race. SkiPix.com will have all of the photos available in a few days.

As a way of celebrating, he invited a very talented cast of musicians to perform with him including Jeff Deveau, Clint Bierman, Sean Preece, Jeff Vallone, Peter Day, Brian Chartrand, and Greg Naughton. The night started out with a more acoustic singer/songwriter style set that mixed new and old music. After a quick break, the band returned to play an upbeat mix of songs ending the night with two powerful encores.

if you haven’t had a chance to listen to Rich’s music yet, you owe it to yourself to give him a listen.

Maybe I’m getting old, but I seem to be taking a lot of photos of kids at live music shows. This next one was taken this summer at Nectar’s – it was his first show!

If this subset of photos isn’t enough, there are some more photos from the show on my SmugMug site.

Thanks for a great show and an excellent album, Rich!

Xavier was very interested, as most kids his age are, in the gear we brought with us.  Since this was a light shoot, we only brought a monopod topped with a shoot-through umbrella. It was fun to watch him experiment with what the umbrella did to both light and sound.

If you’re looking for something a little different, consider printing onto a stretched canvas. By doing so, you end up with a photo that has some qualities of a painting and doesn’t require extra framing.

If you’re interested in any of these prints, just click on the image you’d like to purchase. Thank you!

Some photos are an awkward size to print. Instead of a custom order, my recommendation is to pick the width you’re interested in (in the example below, 18″) and order the closest size print. SmugMug will tell you that the image needs cropping in checkout, but I suggest selecting “None” as is highlighted in green.  The advantage to this is that you get a print of the full image in the dimensions that it was intended.  When you receive the print, you can then have your framer trim the white portions off. If you’re interested in ordering a canvas or preframed print, you should contact me directly as that will require a custom order. It’s no extra cost to you, I just can’t configure this shopping cart to support it.

Tomorrow Never Knows is the outgrowth of a show that I saw a few months ago down at Nectar’s.  Back then, they were called “Rubber Revolver” and apparently only intended to play that one show.  Well, I can say that it was a smashing success and I was ecstatic to hear that they were playing another Beatles show.  (Should you desire a soundtrack for this post, I’d recommend this recording of “Oh, Darling” from the show.)

Tomorrow Never Knows is made up of members from Elephantbear (Mike Pedersen), The Grift (Clint Bierman and Peter Day), The Woeful Lonelies (Joshua Glass), Honky Tonk Tuesday (Sean Preece), and Jer Coons. If you’re from around Vermont, you’ve likely seen at least a few of these names around and know they’re a talented group of musicians that regularly put on high energy shows.

Tonight, Tomorrow Never Knows performed Rubber Soul, Revolver, and Abbey Road in their entireties. As someone commented after the show, they just did something The Beatles never did – play Abbey Road live from start to finish.

Middlebury’s Town Hall Theater played hosts to the band and the place was packed. One of the great parts about seeing a show in a theater instead of a nightclub is that you know the lighting is going to be good.

If you have the opportunity to see them, I highly recommend it. You can download the recording of the May 19th show from Nectar’s, but nothing is going to be as good as seeing them live.

Andrew played two sets of music starting off with a more standard singer/songwriter set and finishing by adding some looping and beatboxing. APR’s lyrics and melodies are catchy, but his use of technology really amplifies a one man show into something much larger.

The lights in Nectar’s can range between awesome and miserable from a photographic perspective.  On this particular evening, they (Sergey?) had the lights on a nice rotating pattern that kept things fresh and provided some texture. I did, however, spice it up with a little Strobist action on some of the shots. The only problem I continually run into is the fact that the front lights are gelled so red that skin tones are next to impossible to achieve.

I’ll let you in on a little secret — if you see me shooting black & white at a show it’s generally because the lighting was incredibly red and monochromatic.

(A side note, I love that even through the numerous renovations at Nectar’s, this light has remained a fixture. I’ve heard that the revolving sign outside is in need of some repair — I hope it hangs around for a while, too. )

Great to hear you play again, Andrew! I’m looking forward to hearing the new album.

The rest of Vermont has devastating flooding. There are covered bridges that have washed away; towns that are under water; roads that no longer exist; and significant damage to farmlands. We expect the rivers to swell over the next day or two, so I suspect the real extent of the damage is unknown at this point. Suffice to say, there will be a lot of people who need a lot of help over the coming days, weeks, and months.

The extent of the damage I’ve seen in Burlington has been limited to a few small & medium sized branches, leaves covering many sidewalks, and a potted plant that fell from a second story porch.

For those of you who don’t know what HDR is, it stands for High Dynamic Range. The human eye is capable of adjusting very rapidly to a scene that contains very bright and very dark elements but the camera has a fixed range of brightness that it can capture in any single exposure. HDR is a way of tricking your camera into acting more like your eye; you take multiple photos at different exposure levels and merge them together. I don’t normally talk about technique or gear, so if you want to learn more you’re probably best off reading Trey Ratcliff’s HDR Tutorial.

So, one afternoon in Rhode Island we wandered over to Watch Hill to check out the lighthouse on the point and this is what we saw…

HDR photographs don’t have to be over the top. This next photo is much more subtle, but the texture in the wood and the color of the hedges really stands out in this version. It’s not perfect – you can see some halos in the upper left (I think a result of my lack of a tripod, but it could also be how I processed the photos.)

My opinion of HDR is changing over time. In the beginning I was fascinated; then it got really popular and I started to hate it. Now, I see it as a tool to keep available. The nice part about it is that you don’t have to bring any extra gear with you when you’re out shooting. A tripod is really all you need and it’s a good idea to travel with one of those anyway. I’ll continue to experiment with it and refine my technique.

It was certainly fun to shoot some new things while on vacation. So much of my time is spent taking photos of people — either weddings, portraits, parties, events, sports or otherwise — that I forget it can be fun to make images without people as well.

It’s probably opening a can of worms to ask, but what do you think about HDR? Useful? Interesting? Gaudy? Drop me a comment below.

P.S. – if these look familiar to you, it’s probably because we’re connected on Google+. I signed up just before going on vacation and decided to try using it while I was away. If you’re on Google+, too, add me to a circle and we can figure out a new platform together. If you’re not on Google+ but want to be, I’d be happy to send you an invite so you can sign up.