The eighth band to grace the stage and second to last heavy hitter at the New Wave Music Festival at National Taiwan University’s (NTU) Drunken Moon Lake was none other than My Skin Against Your Skin (MSAYS). This was my third time shooting them in a month, and fourth time overall. I wasn’t so much following them around as it was they were simply playing the shows I wanted to shoot.
Before MSAYS even took to the stage, the crowd not only grew, but generally just packed in right against the stage. This just goes to prove the point I’ve made earlier when talking about other bands: putting on a good show will leads to more engaging performances. The crowd was there not only for the rock solid music, but also because MSAYS puts on a very energetic show; particularly singer Andrea Huang. Heck, that’s one of the reasons I love shooting them.
At this point, I’m very familiar with MSAYS’ music and I’ve talked about it extensively in earlier posts. All I’m going to say on that matter is: it’s tight (as always) and probably more important, they’re still consistent as hell. Couple that with a good show and you’ve got a recipe for awesome-sauce. Which is probably why they’re signed to a label and on their way to bigger and better. Hell, I rarely see bands that aren’t the last on stage getting calls for frenetic calls for encores, and then delivering on them. I absolutely can not wait to shoot them on a real stage!
Notes
Ok, so things changed a bit for MSAYS. The biggest change was definitely the shooting environment. Whereas for most of the festival people were happily seated on the grassy knoll in front of the stage, for MSAYS they got their asses up and in front. This of course was limiter of mobility, but luckily they stopped before the little flowerbed that had been providing a stepping area for me throughout the day. This meant that while I couldn’t get all the angles I necessarily wanted (no cool halo shots), I was far from immobile. I did have to do a lot of stand, shoot, duck to make sure I wasn’t blocking the view for the fans very long, but sore legs the next day are worth it to get nice shots and not piss off the crowd.
The other significant change was the color cast. For this set, the lighting director decided — I guess — to get a little more “rock n’ roll” and the stage was positively nuked in color. The only redeeming thing about everything getting bathed in different colors of light was that it was at the very least consistent. This meant that cleaning up some of that color in post-production was easier than it usually is. But still, I’d rather not have to do it, y’know?
In the realm of smaller quibbles, having had so much coverage of MSAYS recently I decided to stick to my normal guidelines and do no more than five shots of any single band member. This is usually pretty easy, but with a singer as active as Andrea I walk away with literally dozens of frames that I want to use. Oh well, those will go in the photo book I’ll publish. Someday.
Gear
Nikon D7000 (Amazon)
Nikon AF 24mm f/2.8D (Amazon)
Nikon AF 50mm f/1.4D (Amazon)
Nikon AF 80-200mm f/2.8D (Amazon)
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