The Swill Merchants

On Friday, I had the pleasure of photographing my friend John’s band in Northampton.  I met John last summer when I started working at my day job, and he has been begging me since then to photograph his band. Unfortunately I have become such an old lady that on nights when I’m not working or have no plans, you can usually find me in front of the TV in fat pants watching Golden Girls re-reruns.  Going out to a club at midnight isn’t usually my M.O., and that’s usually the time John’s band goes on.  But he finally caught me on a night when I was totally free, and I headed up to NoHo to see his show.  I have to say I am very impressed with The Swill Merchants, and enjoyed the show a lot.  It was difficult to shoot, of course, because of the extremely low light, but I still had a blast.  I felt like flash would be distracting and take away from the cool colors the lighting of the club provided, so I shot with my 50 mm, 1.4 lens, with my ISO at its highest at 1600.  Hopefully John likes some of these shots, since it will probably be another few years until I’m able to handle another late night like that again!  

This is the lead singer of the Swill Merchants, Rich...

The drummer, Pete...

Sam is their violin player...

Bobby P. is the guitar player...

And this is Matt, who for some reason in this picture really reminds me of Joaquin Phoenix with his new scruffy look... although I'm sure Matt is a much more talented musician :)

And finally, we have John!  Okay, so I have a few better pictures than this that actually show John's pretty face, but something about the angle of this one... I just like it!

A few candids for ya...

John- thanks for the invite to the show!  Had a great time and you boys rocked!  And Michele, thanks for being my wingman and lugging my equipment for me :)