OK so this is my fourth post about the 2008 Warped Tour. When I was getting ready for the show in Detroit I mentioned to my daughter that I had to get pictures of Katy Perry because her song is everywhere and rising quickly to #1. I decided to check the billboard charts today and on the Hot 100 Katy Perry “I Kissed A Girl” is #1. Looking at the Top 200 Katy Perry is at #12 up from #14 last week. Based on the times I hear the song played on the XM radio at work I’m sure the album will hit #1.

It was a little stange to realize that this song is so hot and Katy was playing one of the side stages at the 2008 Warped Tour. I took my 3 songs worth of pictures and had a hard time sqeezing through the packed crowd.

Spent a few hours last night edited some more pictures for public view. I was able to edit pictures from Greeley Estates, The Academy Is, Lights and Say Anything. I have over 1,000 pictures to sort through from the day at Comerica Park - so keep looking back.

2008 Vans Warped Tour pictures from Detroit:
http://defoephoto.smugmug.com/Concerts/560281

I spent the day with my daughter and her friend at the Detroit stop of The Vans Warped Tour 2008. It was fortunate that there was not rain this year even though is was predicted. However, it was increadably hot! Perhaps a little rain would have been nice to cool things off. I think that the stop at Comerica Park was attended by more people this year than last. It was definately more crowded. I was a little more organized this year and the photo edited is going a lot faster. It’s still going to be probably a week before I get through all the images. I shot over 16GB of pictures. No major issues this year. I didn’t even get kicked in the head! Just a lot of water thrown on the camera and I had to dodge spit from the lead singer of Norma Jean.

Norma Jean bass player at 2008 Vans Warped Tour stop in Detroit

More pictures from Detroit can be viewed at:
http://defoephoto.smugmug.com/Concerts/560281

Once again I’m preparing to shoot photos at the Warped Tour stop in Detroit. The problems is to many bands and not enough time. I am still trying to figure out what bands to shoot. Anyone going to be there? Any suggestions on bands? I have a few interviews lined up and this always cuts into the band shooting time. Ahh . . . the dilema of it all. I just hope it doesn’t rain.

Some pictures from the 2007 Van’s Warped Tour stop in Detroit can be see at:
defoephoto.smugmug.com/concerts/

I received this press release the other day:

Gainesville, FL - On July 12th 2008, ska pop punk band LESS THAN JAKE will be broadcasting their concert live on Woozyfly.com from The Chance in Poughkeepsie, New York. The evening promises a whirlwind of activity, from fan interviews, to backstage shenanigans, exclusive band interviews and finally the rocking live performance from LESS THAN JAKE.

Currently in the midst of the Shout It Loud II Tour with Goldfinger, Big D and the Kids Table, and Suburban Legends, the boys are celebrating their critically-acclaimed and fan-hailed new album GNV FLA, which was recently released on their own label Sleep It Off Records. In addition, they just announced a handful of September dates with Rancid.

Woozyfly.com is a music media and networking website that specializes in live broadcasting and allows users to create their own profile to broadcast their own live Internet show. Woozyfly will broadcast live the LESS THAN JAKE concert so the band can connect to their fans like never before. The live broadcast will run from 8PM to Midnight EST.

Fans can tune in and watch live all the unexpected surprises at this link: www.woozyfly.com/lessthanjake

Once again I am going to cross the line of blogging and website development. I like wordpress so much that I designed the riverroar.com website using it. The board of the River Roar loved it and there was a lot of good resonse from the site users. I’ve decided to change my photography website to wordpress also. The site is not live on the domain yet but the work in progress can be viewed at defoenet.com/wp/.

Are there any other web-developers out there that are finding that they are using WordPress to design new sites?

Looking for a great way to add images to your WordPress blog? Also want to make some money selling your pictures? A great site to use if you answered yes to both of these questions is SmugMug.com. The picture below is linked from my SmugMug account!

The past week has been very busy. I spent 4 days last weekend taking pictures of the boat races and doing a calendar shoot for the 2008 Dow River Roar. This was 12 hours a day of shooting. I ended up with over 2,000 images. I’ve spent the last week editing all the images and only have about 200 more to go.

The picture above was shot with an Olympus E500 using the Zuiko Digital 70-300mm Lens

I must say that I have been using some new features in Adobe Lightroom and it has helped me speed up the editing process.

My wife keeps wanting me to go through the calendar pictures (and we spent one night doing that) but I’ve got to get the race pictures done first. I’m sure that everyone involed down in the pit area is anxusly awaiting the calendar pictures. The models from 3D Agency in Saginaw created quite a buzz over the weekend.

I noticed that my blog was linked to from a post on Mlive. I followed the link and it was a nice post with some more information about movies shot at Jackson Prison. I never posted any pictures here of the day I spent at Jackson. So here is one of actor Carmen Argenziano.

As mentioned in my last post, I was feeling pretty bummed because I blew a shoot with some models. I really don’t like it when I don’t get the results I’m looking for. This is even more annoying when there is a limited time frame and one of the models is from out of state. It’s not like I can call them back and recreate the shoot. It is done and over with.

The official calendar shoot is this coming Friday and I’ve already made some notes so I don’t repeat some of the mistakes of last week. It didn’t help that this past weekend was so busy I wasn’t able to get out and shoot any pictures. I try to do something each day (besides cars which I shoot every day). Being Fathers Day weekend I decided to relax a little. The family cooked me some food on the grill and we went to a movie. I have to admit that I had a fun and relaxing weekend but now it’s Monday and back to work.

My wife got me a new book for Fathers Day. Exposure Photo Workshop: Develop Your Digital Photography Talent. I started to read it a little last night as I was archiving some old pictures to DVD. I am looking forward to reading this book. I can tell already that this is going to teach me a lot and improve my skills as a photographer.

My wife and I are preparing for a calendar shoot. We have two weeks to put the shoot together and one day to shoot it. This is not a lot of time but we feel confident that we can pull it off. The calendar is for a summer event that supports non-profit agencies. We decided to try to get a PR shot to be able to promote the calendar before the event and try to get some pre-sales.

The shoot that we wanted was a bikini model on one of the race boats. There is one of the race boats available around the city to promote the event. We found out that the boat was going to be parked in front of a grocery store on the busiest street in the city. The models we lined of for the day said this was ok. They were a little apprehensive when we arrived at the location however. But being the professionals they are, the sucked it up and climed on the boat amid a shower of car honks and whistles from drivers by.

The day was more than just overcast it was downright cloudy. Unfortuanately it was to windly to use any portable lighting and I had a silver 42″ Collapsible Disc Reflector but there wasn’t enough sun to catch any light.

I wish the images from the day were better. The location was horrible, there was nothing interesting in the sky and there wasn’t enough light. I guess this is the joy of location photography. I hope the weather will be a little more accommodating on the day of the shoot.