Check-in, shoot, serve coffee...

I am currently residing at the Presidio Motel here in Santa Barbara, where my wife and I are the night managers. Sometimes we run the show during the day, for extra income, when the owners are out of town. Taking on such duties as... making reservations and checking in guests.

The other day we were doing such, when I had the pleasure of checking in Vonda Shepard, who was scheduled as the opening act for Sugarland at the SB Bowl. Later that evening I photographed her performance and the next morning provided her with coffee and muffins as she checked out of her room.

It was kind of weird to have this much interaction with someone who doesn't even know I exist. Here are a few shots from her set...

Sugar-Bowl...

Here are some pics from the Sugarland concert at the SB Bowl. Though it wasn't really my style of music, they put on an excellent show that was a blast to shoot...

Atoms for Peace...

I personally found this shoot difficult. Lighting was tough, lots of photographers and Flea was jumping around like... well, a Flea. I took it upon myself to keep my attention on the two people who mattered to me the most, Thom Yorke and... Flea. Here's a bit of what I got...

Here's a few of the opening act, Autolux...

Going BIG...

Craig Jenkins, owner of the club, Velvet Jones, recently approached me for some live music artwork to hang on the walls of the venue. He wanted the images to cover a variety of music genres, as the Velvet Jones has no discrimination when it comes to booking shows. After weeding through my archive... we narrowed the selection down to shots of Jam Master Jay, Henry Rollins, Slash and Willie Nelson.

With a vast amount of wall space it only made sense to go BIG with the images... a whopping 40x60 inches. Only one image was shot digitally with my Canon 5D (Slash) which held up surprisingly well. I took it upon myself to hi-rez scan the film shots using the Imacon Flextight 848 virtual drum scanner. They all turned out even better than the digital, but it was the shot of Jam Master Jay that blew me away. It was taken on Kodak TMY 400 and hand processed by yours truly over ten years ago. Scanned as a 16bit TIFF at 6300 dpi, the grain turned out beautiful, even at this size.

Here's a shot of me & two of the final products just before final trimming...

(click for lager view)Photo by Troy Hamilton

Printing, mounting & laminating by Samy's Camera

Alicia Keys...

I'm late to post these due to a failed graphics card on my computer. Now that my machine is back home, I can share a few images from Alicia Keys' season opening performance at the Santa Barbara Bowl...

Here's a shot of opening act, Melanie Fiona...

Tis the season...

Today marks the beginning of the 2010 SB Bowl concert season, Alicia Keys will have the honors of kicking things off. I am happy to find that, unlike last season, I will be able to spend my first night shooting from the pit vs. the soundboard.

Also... as a fresh start to a new season... the Bowl launched their new website today. They used a handful of my images as a "banner" slide show on the homepage, which turned out great.

Click the image below to check it out...