Scott Fillmer

This past Saturday I did a live performance photo shoot with Jacob Blount at Eighth & Rail in Opelika Alabama.  This was Jacob’s debut performance and he combined it with an art show and an all around creative evening time.  A local artist, RC, hung painting, drawings, and photographic prints and dubbed the night “drink-n-draw”.  Each table was supplied with a sketch pad (most of which had a few pages of completed sketches from RC) and guests were asked to draw or sketch as they listened to the music from Blount.

It was interesting to hang around with so many creative and talented people and I enjoyed the evening very much.  Several of Jacob’s friends and family came for the opening and it was nice to see so many people there in support of Jak but even if you just walked in not knowing anything about the plans for the night you would have enjoyed a great performance from a local band.  Below are some of my favorites from the night (click the link at the bottom to see all 6 in this blog post).  To see the entire shoot visit the Jacob Blount gallery.  (To see all 6 images in this blog post just click the continue reading link below.)

Something I really enjoy about live performance photography is that it is always a challenge.  The lighting is always bad changing and you never know what to expect (although it was pretty good Saturday thanks to Dan King), plus you can’t really get any predetermined compositions or portraits.  Even the lighting and the sound in the same venue can vary greatly from day to day, but as I told someone recently, 80% of photography is “showing up”.  I was certainly glad I showed up on Saturday.

Jak is still working on a website and myspace page but if you would like to check out some of his music you can bookmark these pages jaknoise and http://www.myspace.com/jaknoise, thanks for a great night Jak.

Coming Up

I still have a few edits left from this past weekend.  One, the Spurlock family, is next on the list and then I have a series of posts from the Catalyst Conference which will include an incredible act of worship with worship painting from Caitlin Beidler from Redemption Art and live performance photos from Aaron Keyes, Franklin Graham with Samaritan’s Purse, Jeff Foxworthy, and several others from Catalyst08.