October 18, 2008 – It’s not even the last song of the night, but there’s confetti flying through the air, the barricade is heaving, and every pair of hands in the house is flashing your very own gang sign. If you’re an average band, your job is done; you toss the encore and call it a night.
If you’re Cobra Starship, you break for a wardrobe change, come back out on stage, and drop an atom bomb.
Following a devastating set of raucous synth pop, the NYC five-piece delivered the final death blow with “Guilty Pleasure” as their encore exit track, cranking the thermostat even higher as the opening synth lines rolled in.
Sporting a grey Nehru jacket and Buddy Holly glasses, frontman Gabe Saporta led the house through an amped up sing-along of the ¡Viva La Cobra! track for the show’s grand finale.
Cobra Starship is headlining the Sassy Back Tour, with support from Forever The Sickest Kids, Hit the Lights, and Sing It Loud.
Set List (as written):
Intro
Church
City
DJ
–
Robots (Vox Up)
Sass
Medley
Scan/Diamnd/Sped/KI
Prostitute
Paparazzi
Snakes
–
Pleasure
Guilty
Photographer’s Notes:
This show was a party. After Forever The Sickest Kids’ set, it was hard to imagine how Cobra Starship would close down the Sassy Back Tour, but the five-piece threw down in a high-energy set to close out with the night’s biggest performance.
I shot this set with wireless flash, using the Nikon SB-900 to control a series of SB-600s on stage. Even without the speedlights, there were more lighting units on stage than I’d ever seen at the venue, with about a dozen programmable spots on the sides and at the back of the stage.
After FTSK moved their crates and monitors out of the pit, there was considerably more room to move around, so space was not an issue.
Even with speedlights popping off, this show was still an immense challenge, mostly due to the nearly non-stop movement of Gabe Saporta and his tall frame.
Being about eye-level with his high-tops made for some challenging angles. I found that some of the most interesting opportunities came when Saporta would crouch down on stage, but these moments were usually very brief, as the singer would bound back up nearly as soon as he’d come down.
Overall, this was a great, challenging set, and I’m looking forward to the next time I can photograph this group.
Moreover, the band gave a ton of time to their fans after the show. Gabe in particular stuck around chatting, signing t-shirts, and posing for pictures with seemingly everyone in a group of 100+ fans that had gathered outside the band’s tour bus. This refreshing display of generosity and connection with the fans gives me nothing but the utmost respect for these guys. Hats off.
End Notes:
A huge thanks to Shannon, Mark, and the whole band for being awesome about this show/shoot. Great guys, can’t say enough. Also, a shout out to David Mullis, fellow cohort in this wireless flash madness.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008 at 10:22 pm and is filed under Music Photography and tagged with Alex Suarez, cobra starship, decaydance, fueled by ramen, Gabe Saport, Nate Novarro, Ryland Blackinton, synth pop, Victoria Asher, viva la cobra, warped tour. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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Hey Todd! These are simply fantastic! I especially love all the colors! I have a little bit of advice to ask if you don’t mind…I’m shooting my first show with a pass this saturday for Underoath, (I see you’re shooting them Nov. 2nd!) and i have a choice of three lenses, my kit lens-18-70mm f/3.5-5.6, my 50mm f/1.4 and a 24-70mm f/2.8, im leaning towards the 2.8, cause id love to be able to zoom, but im concerned with having the restricted aperture, flash is usually allowed at the venue but in case I didnt want to use it,the 2.8 seemed to win again, I also watched a youtube performance of them from this tour, and they seem to deeply love red lights, and I don’t really lol just wanted to see what you thought, thank you!
p.s I think you meant Sing It Loud when you said Sing It Back up there, probably just had the word back in your mind as this is called the sassyback tour lol
Hey Amy!
Thanks for the comment, glad you like this set. Colorful lights on stage were in no short supply – the bountiful spots and LEDs on stage made sure of that. White light, if anything, would have been the key issue, but luckily I had that on demand!
Regarding your question, I think that if it were me, I’d be inclined to go as wide as I could. I have just shot Underoath once before on the Mayhem Fest tour, but Spencer seemed to love the front of the stage and frequently go up on the monitors.
I would probably use the kit lens for 18mm, and then switch to the 24-70mm for everything else, if that makes sense.
Also, regarding flash, if it’s an option, it wouldn’t hurt. The band moves around a lot, as you know, so any help in freezing that motion is going to be an asset. If you have any time to experiment, I’d use flash for some and go with ambient for others.
Hope this helps! I should be shooting Underoath in a few weeks, so we’ll have to compare notes.
Underoath is a really tough band to shoot live, but you’ll have a blast. Good luck with your shoot, let me know how it goes.
PS: Good catch, you’re right. I’ve got Sassy Back on the brain.
thanks todd, photos turned out great as usual. i wish i could have gotten more of the lights to trigger, i think i figured out why though so hopefully it will work out better next time and i can get some better separation. DJ was real excited at school today haha.
Hey David, thanks for the comments, and also thanks for all your help. I just checked out your CS shots, they look good! I’m digging this one.
We’ll have to try to do this for Underoath and The Devil Wears Prada, what do you think?
Just sent DJ an email with a link to this set.
ahahah. he wore a red plaid jacket at my show.
and i hate to be like.. 15 but damn those boys are sex. and i feel you captured that nicely.
ps. you got to shoot the whole show? unless they mixed up the songs between the 2 venues (which they might have).
Hi Julia, thanks for the comment. Gabe is a coordinated fellow.
I did shoot the entire show, which I must say was a nice luxury for bringing it home.
This and this especially are fantastic. Cobra are such a great band to shoot – I shot them in August myself and it was one of the most fun sets I think I’ve ever shot.
Hey Kate! Thanks very much for the comments. I just checked out your CS set and the shots look great! The house lighting looks pretty good, too. You captured some great poses.
Whoa this set is amazing. I dig the ones with Gabe and Vicky-T, dang those two always have chemistry. I love Ripley’s pose in one of them (he looks like he was dancing). You have nicely captured Gabe’s tall and skinny-ness :D And I like this one.. oh Gabe.
And I totally know what you mean by “after FTSK”, I only bought my tickets to see the Kids, and I’ve watched tour videos and I thought CS is gonna be such a letdown after FTSK. Obviously what was I thinking it’s CS it’s gonne be awesome. Your set makes me excited again for this show again, it’s gonne be EPIC!
Hey Jessie, thanks for your comment. Gabe and Vicky-T had some nice photo moments late in the set.
At one point, Gabe was swinging the mic cord around and it got wrapped around Vicky’s neck. One of the techs ran out to help, but Gabe decided to use it as part of the show and used the cable as a leash to pull Vicky closer. Fun times.
It’s going to be a great time! Maybe I should mail you some prints to give to the band…
These are epic. I feel like I need to see this band now.
I’m ignorant with CLS – is it all TTL based or do you manually dial down the flashes? You get such a great balance of ambient and flash.
Hey Tasha, thanks very much! I would say that CS are a great band for photographers. Extremely challenging, as it’s all non-stop craziness on stage, but also a photo party for the very same reason.
The “Creative Lighting System” term is just Nikon’s cute name for their wireless flashes, but I think at its core it’s very similar to Canon’s system.
You can set the metering mode for the remotes to be either TTL or Manual. The system also supports Auto Aperture (AA), but this is a non-TTL legacy mode for older cameras as far as I know.
Exposure compensation can be dialed into the remote and commander flashes in a six-stop range (-3EV to +3EV). In manual mode, you can make adjustments from 1/128 to 1/1 in 1/3-stop increments.
I shot with TTL-metering on the flashes for most of this set.
These shots are so sick… did you post process them at all? A couple of them, 1 and 3, seem to have a different look to them… almost like the clarity was boosted or something, but I really like it.
I really enjoy 1, 2, 3, 5, 14 and 18. 1 and 3 are definitely my favorites, and I think the strobes really came in handy for those photos, especially. Really like the angle in 5, and the sort of camaraderie feeling in 18.
Nice set! Sucks you didn’t get to do portrait shots with them… what about Upright Animals?
Hey Chris, thanks for your picks. I didn’t really do anything special to these shots, what you see is what you get.
#3 is probably my favorite shot for how the lighting turned out.
Yeah, unfortunately the portrait timing didn’t work out, but I’m still glad we got to set up for the live show. Portraits just would have been gravy.
I’m scheduled to do a shoot with the Upright Animals this Sunday if everything works out.
After going through the ones at the bottom [I forgot to do that..], I’ve also realized I love these:
1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Hey Chris, that’s funny you you mention those five additional images, as those were all shots I was considering for the main, inline set.
Dude, this is a cool set. I like 1 and 5 a lot. More than anything, I like your framing. Seems like you stayed pretty wide. So much action going on on stage. I like it!
Hey Keith, thanks for the picks. Yeah, I did favor the wider angles for this set. Going in for tight framing was just a recipe for disaster given the angles and movement on stage. 70mm was plenty for more head and shoulders shots of Gabe.
Great shots, Todd! That stage looks small for them. I have such a huge crush on Vicky. Being on Warped with them this summer was not good for me. I kept running into her all over the place.
I hope you got atleast one good shot featuring Gabe’s gold domed mic.
Hey Brian, thanks! The stage was pretty tight, especially with all the lighting gear, speakers, and banners.
I’ll have to check back on the mic. I definitely noticed it while shooting and editing.
Thanks for the explanation, Todd. I’ve been wondering about it for a while, and it makes more sense now. It is similar to Canon’s system, but seems to a be a little more flexible when adjusting outputs remotely.
Sure thing, Tasha. One thing I’ve really been enjoying about the new Nikon SB-900 is the ease of setting the exposure for the remote flashes.
The new jog dial interface of the flash makes changing the output for my SB-600s really easy. Also, the simple addition of a power/mode switch is great – I can just flip the selector to commander mode instead of going through the menu, as I did for the SB-800.
I am going to do a write-up about flash and also update the Gear Guide to include these speedlights.
Hey Todd,
I think you’ve shot more keytarists in the past year than I’ve seen in my entire life.
What can I say, I enjoy a good keytar.
Hey, what can I say… I have great taste. :)
hey again! thanks so much for answering my question, it absolutely helped a ton and I will definitely let you know how it goes! and to what you said about them up there, I have so much respect for them as well, out of the couple times I met Gabe, one was raining and the other was in freezing february weather and just like you witnessed he did indeed stay out there taking his time with every fan, even with security guards telling everyone to leave-I love them all!
Hey Amy, sounds good. Yes, Gabe is the man. When it was just down to about 8 or so fans, Gabe was talking about how he went to Japan. Someone in the group replied in mock disappointment, “What, and you didn’t bring me anything?”
Gabe says, “No, wait, I did!” And he runs back to the tour bus and grabs a bag of random stuff he picked up while abroad, like little cell phone charms and such. Everyone got to reach into the bag and pick something.
Now, anyone seeing these guys coming up shouldn’t expect exotic gifts from Japan out of a magical goodie bag, but regardless, I think that sort of kindness deserves mad respect.
Whoa the comments – CS do have their charm.
Are you serious about the prints? Haha. The thing is, they are too amazing.. I might just end up keeping them for myself and wouldn’t let you know…;)
Maybe it just means splitting it up. The band gets a set, you get a print you get a print for your duties as courier, and you send a signed print back to me.
todd, dumb question, but how do you get the access to put up lighting? or do you just set it up early because you do house work in you area?
i guess i was just trying to figure out if the bands are like, do whatever you like…
and jesus this set freakin rocks!!! the balance of the flashes and ambient are unbelieveable…
you da’man!!! :)
Hey Kenny, thanks for the feedback, glad you like the set.
I get permission from the bands to put up lighting rigs like this. No more, no less. With lightstands on stage, that’s really the only way it goes down.
Seriously?! For real?! That sounds sweeeet :D
We need to talk.
Todd,
These photos are fantastic!
I was so looking forward to see them because I love so much this band.
I’ve seen them many times in England and it has always been a big party. Awesome! And your pictures just made me feel like dancing. Cheers!
Hey Solange! Thanks for your comment, glad to hear you enjoyed this set. This was the first time I’d seen CS and it was a lot of fun. You’re right, it really was like a big party.
wow these shots are amazing!
amazing job!
Thanks, Ros.
Holy shit man, these are fantastic. Gabe definitely makes it difficult to shoot them; the man never stops moving EVER. I don’t know how many blurry shots I got of him…
Also, all of your photos pwn mine.
Hey Sara, I agree, Gabe is a very, very tough target. He’s all over the stage! Thanks for the comment, glad to hear you like the images!
Hey todd, I can see where you used the cls system, but what outputs (if you can remember) were you using? Did they let you set up light stands with the strobe adapters or were they just on the floor/speakers or something?
Hi Tony, I shot this show with varying exposure for the remotes. Sometimes they were on TTL, sometimes they were on manual – and the power was changed throughout the set as well.
I had permission to set up lightstands for this set. The front two remotes were placed at the corners of the stage.
Interesting, that’s pretty cool though. Its just like regular photography, it helps the target stick out from the background just that much more.
While I used to never use flash, it’s a good option to have, depending on the band and general situation. Flash has certainly been an asset for me for a lot of the recent gigs I’ve shot.
These pictures are seriously so amazing. I love them all so much! They came out so great. As an aspiring photographer myself, I’d like to tell you that I’d love to photograph like you one day.
Hey Karen, thanks for the kind words! Start taking your camera to shows!
Great shots, I especially love the one of the crowd with the confetti.
Hey Norrel, thanks!
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