Octopuss Band playing at Changzhou MiGong Livehouse 2015

 

 

To be best perfectly honest, shooting in live houses sucks, it is always as dark as hell, terrible lighting and sound. But a job is a job, so I lugged my big camera bag and my assistant to Changzhou to shoot Octopuss Band, mostly because I really like the band and their last show that I shot was awesome.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I got to the livehouse just before sound check and watched the usual struggle of foreign bands struggling to do their sound check. Chinese bands and foreign bands set up very differently before a show, and it is always a huge F### up which gets solved just before the show starts. Lucky for me, I got to sit and watch the setup and enjoy some of the action. After sound check, it was time for a quick portrait shoot with the band. I usually keep band portraits down to under 3 minutes. Bands hate getting their portraits taken, so the less time they have to stand in front of the camera, the better.

 

 

After a quick dinner, it was show time. Octopuss band had a great show, even though the livehouse was not packed. Their live show is so good. I shot most of the show, while running around and making sure that my assistant was doing his job and shooting the video that I needed. It was a difficult shoot though, like all livehouess, it was so dark.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Shooting the show was difficult as I had expected, there was no pit to shoot from so i was weeding my way through the crowd to shoot and then running back to the sound board to check up on my assistant and the videos he was shooting. At the end of the show, I was exhausted but I absolutely loved the show. Some bands just have pure magic on stage and this band has it in spades. I hope that I will get the opportunity to shoot the band in the future again.

Shaun