On Sunday, 1/20/08, I went with my friend E to see Ingrid Michaleson (with backup singer Allie Moss) at the Doug Fir Lounge. My friend Dan Torres is good friends with her so he was able to get me permission to shoot concert photos of her with my huge white canon lens. Needless to say lots of people asked me to take photos of them as well. I declined. Greg Laswell and his sideman Brandon opened for Ingrid. Here’s some photos from the night.

(Allie and Ingrid)

(Allie and Ingrid)

(Ingrid)

(Ingrid)

(Greg Laswell)

(Brandon)

E Jeff Einowski, of Open Mic Scout, and I are continuing to record and photograph Zilla Sake’s open mic night. Here is a recent poster I made for the open mic night.

For new photos from Zilla go to my flickr site.

I discovered Zilla Sake (located on NE Alberta and 18th in Portland) back in August, with my good friends E, Eric, and Shane, during a Last Thursday event. Zilla Sake is a very great establishment where there are always a lot of familar faces and the owners, Allowe and Blaine, are very friendly and very knowledgeable about sake.

Every Tuesday night Zilla Sake has an open mic night. Now usually when you think of open mic night badly sung covers come to mind but not here. The talent at Zilla Sake’s open mic night is pretty incredible. While there are a lot of covers, there is also a bunch of really great original music. My friend E Jeff Einowski has been running the sound board and recording the performers for the past couple months and producing a podcast, called open mic scout, out of it, which can be downloaded here: open mic scout . It’s quite a treasure being able to listen to high quailty live recordings from the night (a lot which could rival studio recorded songs). That said, I highly recommend you check out the site.

This Tuesday, E asked if I would come and take photos of the artists (up until now he has been just using a crappy 2megapixel camera). I eagerly obliged. Being indoors in a darkly lit setting I had to use my canon speedlight flash. Now in the past I haven’t been to happy with the photos produced with the flash so I was a little skeptical of how they would turn out. Luckily at the venue I was able to bounce the flash of the ceiling to create a softer, more diffused light than if I were to shoot the flash straight at the subject (which creates and shows very harsh shadows; not to mention very sweaty faces).

Anyways, as always you can view the photos I took on my fickr account.