Jan 1, 2010

Happy New Year!

What a remarkable evening I had. I was working in Solon, IA the past few days and Clear Lake, IA was on my way home. So I decided to stop at the famous Surf Ballroom. I knew my friends Free Fallin' a Tom Petty Tribute band was going to be there. They are a wonderfully fun band to photograph! And they sound really good too!

Yes, I was saying that for my benefit as much as yours. You see, I'm country... but if you know me at all, you'll also know that Elvis is one of the important images in my life. Admiring Elvis throughout the years have introduced me to many of my closest friends. It also allowed me to build my desire to learn more about photography.

So anyway... The Surf Ballroom... It's amazing! I've worked in Clear Lake, IA many times, I even visited the site of Buddy Holly's plane crash that ended in his untimely death along with Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper. For more info about Buddy Holly and the fatal plane crash, visit 'The Day The Music Died'.

I really enjoyed the evening at The Surf Ballroom, not only was Free Fallin' the Tom Petty tribute band there, but so was a Kiss Tribute band named Kiss Army and an Aerosmith tribute band named Toys in The Attic. Anyway, I ended up taking a lot of pictures. I was using my new Nikon 5omm f1.8. This is the first time I was able to play with the 'burst' in my Nikon and still get some pretty good pictures. I had fun not needing the to use the flash at all. When I said I took alot of pictures... I did, approx 2000 were captured. and belive it or not, I dumped less than 300 due to too much movement (blurred) or not quite enough light. I will dump more though because when you use bursts, you do end up with too many duplicates sometimes. I will upload photos to these bands to my MySpace page within a week.

Hope your New Year Eve was as fantastic as mine!

The photo of the day, which is above is of the Canadian Pacific Rail Road's Holiday Train that came through our state a few weeks ago. I was able to climb up into the engine and visit with the engineers. I wish I would have thought to go out to the side of train, up on the plank, and photograph towards the back from there.

Photos taken of Free Fallin' can be found here.