One of the worst clubs in the world to take photos at is the Asbury Lanes in lovely Asbury Park, NJ. Don’t get me wrong, this vintage bowling alley is a rockabilly wonderland teeming with fantastic live music, ’50s flair, and great food and beer. However, the lighting above the stage consists of three crappy yellow lights burning down on the band.
Trying to shoot at the venue has been a difficult task to say the least. Luckily, the shows are good, cheap, and plentiful, so I have no problem coming back again and again to try out new tricks and practice mucking around with my camera settings. Sometimes I have good experiences; sometimes I shoot 4GB of crap.
Last Saturday, we swung by The Lanes to check out a bunch of bands I’ve heard good things about, but have never seen live–The Arkhams, Knock Galley West, and the band in the shot above, Blue Suede Bombers. Rather than deal with tweaking all the colors and exposures later, I just gave up and cranked the ISO up to 3200 and shot in grayscale. All three bands turned out much better in black and white than in color, so I might have found the best way to photograph at The Lanes. We’ll see what happens at a sold out show.
