— kx

« any hopeful dreams arrive » 

Santa Monica,
04 Feb 2005 

~

perhaps the earliest photo that I still absolutely love,
(the prior 6 years with nothing of note)
and ever so unrepresentative of Santa Monica,
and impossible to recreate.
but forget Santa Monica… this was life at the time:
the mental state in its best representation. 

NB:
1. a crop made it as a download cover artwork [ link to bandcamp ]
2. I have nicked the quote from Godspeed You! Black Emperor.
3. even without the suggestion, people tend to call this the “godspeed…” photo. 
4. a suitable GYBE song for it [ link ] 

Godspeed You! Black Emperor played for five nights.
( at the Great American Music Hall, in San Francisco.)
it was great to manage to take photos for each night that I attended,
though it was certainly a challenge.

on the first night (16th),
the lighting was flat,
but enough to use a “normal” small camera.
the challenge was getting a good vantage point.
the second night (18th),
it was quite funny to notice that the lights on the band,
still flat which is great,
was ever so much more dim.
the camera from the 16th would not function,
as it was too dark.
another camera came to the rescue with settings I thought maxed it out,
but it hardly turned out to be the case.
(the light was about 4 stops dimmer than on Monday, so the settings were 6400 ISO, 1/15s, and ƒ1.4). the 1/15s shutter is too slow for moving people, but I thought that would make it part of the charm.

from this vantage point,
I really liked the form of David Bryant’s leaned-over playing and how the projected film and the rest of the stage looked “over his shoulder.”
so I took many photos of that perspective.
this is my favorite among all of the ones that were decent enough in quality.
I like the “diamond” distribution of Mauro, Thierry, Sophie and David,
and their particular performance moment.

four nights of 2+ hours of music each night was fantastic,
seemingly, as they can only provide.
the previous one-band string was 3 nights with them in 2011,
and 3 nights with the Tindersticks,
but this one was with much increased effect,
despite missing out on Tuesday’s performance.

on the 20th,
instead of photographing the band,
I worked on the additional performer: the projectionist.
for some reason,
the context of GAMH,
in a Sugimoto sense was nice.
well, at least the idea of it.
unsure of the results.

~

Godspeed You! Black Emperor
:: Great American Music Hall
:: 18 Apr 2012 

with (left to right)
Mauro Pezzente, David Bryant, Thierry Amar & Sophie Trudeau

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