The Lost Fingers & Valérie Amyot

Those of you who took the time to read about my photographs taken during the New Year's Eve fireworks display at the Old Port of Montreal may have also read the part where I mentioned that My Lovely Assistant and myself also attended a live concert by The Lost Fingers.  The Lost Fingers are a jazz group who also do jazzed up covers of songs from the 1980's & 1990's.  We really like them, so our New Year's Eve plans were locked when we saw a sign saying that they would be performing at the Old Port on December 31st.  On this night, they were joined by singer Valérie Amyot.  I had my camera with me to shoot the fireworks later that night, but I was hoping that I'd be able to find my way close enough to the stage to be able to take a few shots of the concert as well.  I had brought my telephoto lens with me because I thought that at best, I'd be probably stuck in the middle of a crowd, fairly far away from the stage. Much to my surprise, when we got to the Old Port the crowd wasn't as large as I had thought it would be.  Might have had something to do with the freezing temperatures as well.  People kept arriving on the site, but they were generally walking past the stage and headed down further to the docks of the port, I suppose to get a good spot to watch the fireworks.  I stood by the stage for a little while when the desire to get in there and start snapping away began to be a little bit to strong.  I made my way to the edge of the stage, and a few songs later, thanks to some people deciding that they'd had enough and were ready to leave, I actually found myself right against the metal barrier that separated the crowd from the stage.  While I was stuck to the left of the stage and unable to get closer to the center, I was still closer than I probably had any business being, and also closer than I had even thought that I would be.  I pulled out my camera and wasted little time in snapping away.  It was great to be a pretend concert photographer for the night.  This experience ranks right up there with the great opportunity I had back in July to get close enough to the stage to take photographs of the Girls Wanna Have Fun outdoor concert in Greenfield Park (you can see those photographs here, here, and here).  It was really fun.  The music was great, and there was even a little bit of snow falling from the sky.  I really like the photos where you can see the snow blowing in the background.  The first photograph was taken at f/2.8, 1/500sec, ISO 1600 at 70mm.  The second photograph was taken at f/2.8, 1/200sec, ISO 1600 at 70mm.  The third photograph was taken at f/2.8, 1/250sec, ISO 1600 at 70mm and the fourth photograph was taken at f/2.8, 1/200sec, ISO 1600 at 70mm.  Here are a couple more to finish up the set.

f/2.8, 1/200sec, ISO 1600 at 40mm

f/2.8, 1/400sec, ISO 1600 at 70mm

As I said earlier, I transformed myself into imaginary concert photographer for the night, and I tried to stick by the rules of a concert photographer as well.  That meant that I just stayed in my spot for three songs, snapping as many as I could in that time.  I then moved along, leaving my spot for another, as had been done for me.  I was really happy with the results, I think they look great.  Even better, I remembered to reset my ISO back to 100 before the fireworks began.  A double victory.