My first RAW Artists Event -aka "So a bikini model, a quadruple amputee and a panda hop up on a trapeze bar......"

    Sounds like the opening to a bad joke, but it really happened. Photographic evidence will be salted into this post at the appropriate times, but I figure I will put the bikini models up front so my Twitterfeed will grab that image, figure those will grab the most interest anyway. There really isn't much backstory to these shots other than they stopped by my booth to shoot while they were waiting to go on stage for the fashion show. One of the other artists at the event was a swimsuit designer.

    So, on to the event. I lost money on ticket sales. When I was researching RAW Artists prior to the event, there was a lot of debate over whether they were a scam or not. Seems like all that really started form one guy screaming about how unfair it was for RAW to ask him to pay for the privilege of showing his work at their event. In his view they should have been paying him to be there. I am not going to give this guy the courtesy of a link, you can google around if you want. I haven't seen his work, so I can't say whether or not he is any good, but from his posts he pretty much struck me a troll. But I will give my impression of the setup. Scam implies some sort of dishonesty or falseness. I experienced none. The SD chapter of RAW put an add on CL looking for artists wanting to showcase their work. I replied and their SD coordinator called me and invited me to do the show. She pretty much laid it out, I had to commit to selling 20 tickets presale, or I would owe the equivalent amount. It was completely straightforward, they use that guaranteed money to secure the venue and for advertising. Having run large events before I think that is pretty fair. Any ticket sales over that is their profit, any sales the artists make at the event are the artists' profit, no commission to RAW. So you basically take a bet. If you have 20 fans willing to come to a party for you, you pay nothing other than your own setup costs for whatever you do (i.e.- display prints and stuff for me). And if you wind up having to pay the balance, you still get to use that ticket yourself as a guest list spot. So, RAW takes ticket money in exchange for providing a venue, advertising and some setup on site. No scam anywhere, and I was very impressed with the staff and the event, which was better run than a lot of larger events I have been part of. 

   My biggest disappointment was that I could not find 20 people willing to buy tickets in my name, even with the lure of free vodka from Stoli, one of the sponsors RAW was able to find. That hurt and caused me to question a lot about what I do for friends and how much of my work I have given away. Posted about that a while back so won't re-hash now, I am still churning it over in my head. And am very thankful for the ones who did support me. Some of the most fun parts of the night were hanging out with my friends who did show up. (and I also appreciate the support from people who would have made it if they could have, I know who you are too) 

  I also had no idea what to really expect. There were a couple of other photographers slated to be there and they all had really amazing stuff online. I was worried about how to set myself apart. My primary distinction right now is my niche of shooting performers and festivals. That was where I concentrated when picking prints to display. Then I saw images of the venue in the prep materials RAW sent me and it looked like there were some good beams in the ceiling, so I got the idea of hanging an aerial apparatus and setting up a mini photo booth to take shots of people posed on the trapeze, so maybe they would want to purchase them later. Wasn't sure I would be able to, but figured that was my best shot at being unique. 

    Since spaces were given out on a first come, first serve basis I got there right on time for the setup opening. Looked around, only really found one spot I would be able to set up a trapeze and a shoot. It was a less than perfect spot, but it worked. 

  It was a much narrower space than I would have liked, no room for light stands, so I actually wound up moving the reflector to the opposite side from what you see above and mounting my light on the staircase to the right. I knew the backdrop was likely to be wrinkled when I unpacked it, but I didn't have the ability to iron or steam it, so my plan was to put it far enough behind the bar that I would be able to add a light between the two and totally blow out the background and the wrinkles wouldn't matter. But I wound up having to mount it a few inches behind the bar, because there is another artist set up right behind it. Overall; however, except for the wrinkled background, I was pretty happy with the set up, one light (SB910 with a popup softbox) and a reflector did pretty good for the shots. 

  Since it was flash and low ISO, I set up the trigger on the D3200 and used it for the portraits so I would be able to use Excalibur as my walk around camera and for shooting the fashion show. (which I missed because I wound up too busy at my booth) More separation would have also eliminated the shadow. I had to hope that the portrait idea would work because after seeing everyone else set up, I realized how underprepared I was for this. The rest of the artists seemed to have a lot more experience doing shows and were much better set up than me. I hadn't even had time (thought of it too late) to make a large sign with my logo. One of the other artists even had a giant panda suit. Not really sure why, but for most of the night it guarded her booth and posed with a "meet the artist" sign. I told her at some point in the night she would have to put the panda on the trapeze for a portrait. And she did. 

As it turns out, everyone loves pandas. Even models.

   Overall it was a fun night and a great experience. I got a lot of great shots. I met some really cool people. I got to hang out with a few great friends who came to support. I have already had one person buy their trapeze portrait and gotten several new fans on FB. Didn't sell any pictures, but it was an enjoyable experience. One of my favorite sets of shots from the night is the last part of the promised intro. My alley was right at the bottom of the stairs to the second level. At one point later in the evening,  I watched a woman carry her girlfriend down the stairs because she was a quadruple amputee. As they got to the bottom of the stairs I told them they had to pose on the trapeze for me, and they did. 

  Of all the awesome shots I got, these are probably my favorites, I think more than anything else because you can really see how much they love each other. When I shoot I want to capture my subject's soul, and I think I was lucky enough to really get a glimpse of something special between these two, and that alone made the whole night worth it for me even if I did lose a bit on the tickets. 

  You can see the whole gallery of trapeze portraits on my site and tell me what you think, but I am pretty happy with how the night went and I look forward to being part of more RAW Artists events in the future. 

Sometimes you have to know when not to shoot.... and some personal disappointment. It's been a long night.

 So, just got home from shooting a golf charity event for the Travis Manion Foundation. I wasn't familiar with them before this event, but after tonight I can say that they really are an awesome group, and I will shoot their events anytime I can because they deserve any support I can give. Cliff Notes version is they were founded in honor of two Special Forces soldiers killed in action, they not only support the families of others killed in action but also the survivors who have to deal with PTSD, disabilities and other nasty side effects of war.

  From a technical side, played a lot with fill flash and found out that I totally love my new modifier, the Honl Traveller 8 Soft Box. When I eventually get the gallery posted, probably 95% of the outdoor shots were taken using fill flash with this one on, mostly pointed directly at the subject. 

  But that isn't what we are talking about here. The biggest lesson of the night was not what I shot, but rather what I didn't shoot. And I am not talking about kids sneaking beers when dad wasn't looking, because yeah, I shot that....

  

  No, what I am talking about is respect for your subjects. It's a tough line. As a photographer, I want to capture raw emotion. Some of the most award winning photos out there are of very emotional subjects, usually grief, at least in the photojournalist world. The public loves to see others' grief and agony. But how does that factor into my night at a charity golf tournament you might ask? (even if you don't ask, I am going to pretend that you did, because it's my blog) Well, there was a two hour cocktail reception prior to the dinner. For those of you who aren't photographers, let me tell you, there are only so many shots you can get of people standing around having cocktails, filling out silent auction forms, etc. Over the course of 120 minutes of this, you may find that you get highly bored. One option is to try and look around for artistic shots you can take on the side to test your skills and give you a moment of variety. 

   Or, if you are like me, you will notice that some of the guests seem to be very shy about having their picture taken and will try to hide from the camera. One of these guests in particular, I sensed had a good humor about it, so it became a game of me trying to catch her and get a good shot before she could turn away and hide. We chatted about it and it became a running joke throughout the reception. She asked how I wound up taking pics, I told her I knew the event planner who had set this one up, I asked her about how she wound up here, she just said she supported the foundation. 

   After cocktail hour, everyone moved inside to the dinner and speakers. The first one up was a singer/guitarist who had lost his brother. During his song, a moving piece about love and loss, I panned around the room looking for shots that would capture the emotional nature of the moment. Then I saw my camera shy target from before, and she was almost completely broken down, being comforted by friends around her at her table. I raised the camera, composed what would have been a really powerful and emotional shot, focused in.... and put the camera down. I couldn't do it. I felt like I was a peeping tom looking into a window at someone's most intimate moments. Taking the picture just didn't seem right, not sure if it was because of all the banter before about catching her unawares, or if I just felt that she needed the space to go through whatever she was going through at that moment in private, the shot just felt wrong. So I didn't take it. Later on, one of the speakers asked the survivors of soldiers who had been killed in action to stand, my shy nemesis stood up. Turns out she was there because she was a widow, her husband was one of the people who was being honored by the charity tonight. 

  There were plenty of other emotion filled moments throughout the night that I did capture

  So why not that one? I really can't answer. Maybe I lack the killer instinct that is necessary to be a good photojournalist. But I just feel like some moments, despite how beautiful they would be to capture, are better left as private monuments and memorials for those who need them. It is easy to hide behind the camera, to use the distance of the lens to filter yourself out from what you shoot. To be in the world, btu not of the world (to steal a concept from the christians....) but that isn't who I want to be, either as a person or as a photographer. I want to capture life and emotion, but I want to do it as respectfully as I can, in a way that will be appreciated by my subjects. I never want to be that annoying paparazzi, or the "guy with a camera" stalking the hot girl. Even at festivals where running around naked is the norm, until I know the people on the business end of my lens are OK with it, I don't shoot. I think that while I may miss a few great shots by putting the camera down when I need to, it will be more than worth it in the long run. It seems like taking the extra second to let the potential subject see the camera and acknowledge my presence, giving unspoken permission for me to shoot, breaks down walls and leads to trust that in turn leads to better shots later. Or at least not being "that guy." 

  So, my ultimate lesson from tonight was having it really brought to the forefront of my consciousness that I may be defined to the outside world by the shots I take, but also I am defined by the shots I don't take. the moments where I feel it is more important to give people their privacy, or the moments where I choose to put the camera down and participate more directly in life. 

  Overall, it was a tough night on many emotional levels. Probably half of the attendees were Special Warfare types, either still active, or had been. Some of whom were sporting obvious injuries from their service. And here I am, been in the Navy 15 years. only done one deployment, and that safe on an armored ship out to sea. Watching and taking pictures of people who were part of the world I used to want to be a part of so badly, what I joined the Navy to do. A couple of the operators were there with their families, the organizer (who I know from circus) is married to a SEAL and they are about to have their first child. Part of me feels like less of a man because I did not get selected for SPECWAR or SPECOPS despite having put in for it three times. But now, as I come up on the first birthday of my son, another part of me is glad I am not faced with the risks and the lifestyle these guys are. My little dragon can be reasonably sure his daddy will come home every night, and when I do deploy, I can at least tell him where I will be and when I expect to be home. I can't imagine leaving the little dragon without his dad, or putting his mom in the position several of the women at the event tonight were in. It was incredibly sobering, and it made me want to not be sober. Good thing I had open bar access as part of the deal for shooting. 

  But, just so I don't end this segment of the post on a down note- enjoy this picture of a totally epic moustache on one of the attendees....

  

  In other news, I also promised some personal disappointment. Well, If you are following along on the home game, I posted a while back about my first showing coming up this Thursday. The deal with the group putting on the event was you agreed as a participating artist, that you would either sell 20 tickets or pay the difference. That's how the group guarantees they have enough funding to run the event. I figured that out of all the people I have supported over the past years with my time, my equipment, anything; all the people who have enjoyed my pics, made them their profile pics, shared them with friends, etc... I could sell a measly 20 tickets. These tickets came with free booze. I advertised on Facebook, Google +, Tumbler, this blog, craigslist, every social media outlet I could think of. I offered free prints and the chance to win a free photo shoot to people who bought tickets before the deadline. 

    I sold five. And one of those was a charity purchase by a friend who lives cross country and has no intention of coming to the event. 

   Gonna take a bit to digest this one. Part of me wants to say screw it. No more shooting for friends for free. Why support people when it isn't reciprocated? But I don't know if I can do that, it isn't in my nature. Giving until it hurts is part of who I am. A big part of my personal growth theses past years has been trying to learn to say no, find limits and establish my boundaries, trying to find the line of giving and gifting of myself without becoming doormat. Learning to say when "this is not ok." I love photography. I love shooting shows, festivals and events. I love seeing the great reactions that friends have to my images. I enjoy it. It makes me part of the action when I go to shows and festivals. I like it. But on a realistic side, my naval career is effectively over. I would be stunned if I rise past my current rank and get promoted again. Realistically I am looking at retiring in roughly five years, whether I want to or not, and having to find something else to do with my life. Right now, the only two realistic options I have are photography and circus. And I keep giving both of those things away. I need to manifest a way to turn what I love into a path to freedom, a way to live after the Navy and still manage to provide for my family. Not sure how I am going to balance that with my giving tendencies. I was hoping that this first show would give me an indicator that the support was there. But with certain notable exceptions, it resoundingly wasn't. I sort of feel like I got kicked in the junk. Now I just have to figure out how to deal with that and how to move forward. And how to pay for the unsold tickets. Oh well,  at least I will get some free booze from Stoli, one of the event sponsors. 

  And thanks to those five people who did step up. You know who you are. And so do I. But seriously, tell me this mustache isn't freaking epic....

Ignight Festival, the full report

  So, last weekend I had the privilege of shooting the Ignight Fire and Flow Festival, held at Joshua Tree  Lakes campground in Southern California. This was an epic weekend. I attended the festival last year as both a medical volunteer and participant, and was eagerly looking forward to this year's event. Last year, I had to pretty much be on call the whole weekend since it was close to the birth of the corporate mascot, but I went to a lot of workshops and had a blast. At that point I was still waiting for the D3200 I had ordered and was just preparing to dive back in to the world of photography. This year I was really looking forward to not only taking more workshops and learning some new things from the masters, but also getting the chance to spend several nights shooting away and experimenting with different ways of shooting fire performers. Then news got even better when I found out it would be a new moon, which meant it would be dark and far enough away from city lights to take a stab at shooting some of my first star trails.
  Got in on Thursday afternoon, set up camp, had dinner, then did my first star trail attempt. Left the camera shooting for three hours, only to find out in the morning that I had confused interval and time lapse modes, so I had a 30 second movie instead of 300+ images to stack into trails. Ooops.
  Friday morning started with bacon and mimosas, then I headed off to get some massive learning started. Good thing I had the camera to turn to, because during my first workshop it quickly became obvious that some trapeze damage to my left shoulder and back (i.e.- those muscles basically took the impact of a bad landing and sacrificed them selves to keep me from literally breaking my neck) wasn't as healed as I thought it was, so I was at a flow conference and unable to spin. (well, I could as long as I didn't do anything that required bringing my left arm above shoulder level...) I found some really awesome massage practitioners who worked on me, and it did help a lot, but between the injury residue and the insane heat, I wasn't able to spin much at all without my muscles totally locking up, so I got to spend even more time than I planned concentrating on photography.
    I mentioned the heat in the quick post, but it was brutal enough that it deserves a second mention. It was freaking hot. So hot that even if the camera was in the bag, left in the shade, it would be almost too hot to touch after about ten minutes. If it was dangling from the strap in open sunlight, it was more like 2 minutes and it was almost hot enough to require gloves to handle. Having read a lot about sensor heating while researching for star trails, as well as having had iphones, watches and other gadgets shut down from heat when I was racing triathlons, I was really worried about the camera overheating, but neither the D4 nor the D3200 had any obvious issues with the temperature besides being hot to the touch. My initial plan was to use the D3200 as my daytime walk around camera, because it was much lighter and has higher resolution, but I hadn't taken one key limitation into account. I was mostly shooting people, which meant even though it was insanely bright outside, I still wanted to shoot wide open on my lenses to isolate my subjects and needed to use fill flash to counteract the very hard mid day sunlight. After about a half hour walking around on Friday i realized that the D3200 is not capable of using auto FP high speed sync, thus I was not able to shoot at anything faster than 1/200 second. Since I didn't have any neutral density filters with me, this meant I couldn't shoot wide apertures to get the shallow depth of field I wanted for my shots. So I had to pull out Excalibur even for the daytime stuff, so I could use fill flash wide open at the shutter speeds necessary to make it all work.
   The heat actually wound up sort of introducing me to some of my best shots. I saw another photographer who was looking pretty beat down by the heat, brought him to the trailer for some AC, soda an a popsicle to cool him off. Hanging out with him and his girlfriend led to meeting Mystic and Maya and getting to shoot their Sensual Movement workshop, which was one of my favorite sets of the weekend. They were both beautiful, sensual, incredible women who were trying to show that anyone could be sexy, and that is something I truly believe. This may be hard for some people to digest, but sexy has absolutely nothing to do with a person's physical looks. I have seen many people that had supermodel looks, but were not at all sexy because of some personality issue, usually stemming from lack of self confidence. Conversely, I have known some people who, despite not being what society in general would call "hot" are the most incredibly sexy people I know simply because of how they carry themselves. I am deliberately trying to avoid using gender specific pronouns, because- while I am hetero(flexible) and thus tend to focus on the ladies, the workshop also had its' complement of totally sexy guys as well. The workshop, besides being photographic gold, was amazing to watch because I think everyone that took part in it, male or female, young or old, left with a little more self confidence than they came in with, and was a  bit more able to believe that they could be sexy. I felt very honored that all the participants allowed me to shoot the workshop and to be a part of that wonderful energy.
    Later on that evening it was time to shoot the opening ceremony- after a wonderfully beautiful golden hour that I only got to slightly enjoy because I had to at least pay some attention to the fire safety brief I was attending at the time. I found a good spot on top of the DJ booth/Bugaloo Bus, slapped on the 70-200 and waiting for it to start. The opening ceremony this year was epic, got some great shots,
missed several more because I was laughing too hard to focus.

    It was basically Disney presents a fire festival..... some great songs from the little mermaid, beauty and the beast, and other disney stories set to fire dance. In short it was AWESOME!

    After the opening, I went to grab some dinner, then decided I was too tired to head back out, so I set the camera up for another shot at star trails and went to bed. This time it worked.
   

    Not the best star trail shot out there, but I'll take it as the first real effort at it with the right camera mode and settings. May have to make a special trip out to the deep desert to do some more of these, especially once I get a wide angle lens.
     Saturday again started with bacon and mimosas, then it was out to wander the festival and see what there was to shoot, and also play a little with the acro yoga workshop because my shoulder was ok for most of that. Got some really awesome massage work done on my shoulder thanks to a couple of very awesome therapists, so I decided to hit the knife throwing and archery workshops, not only to play a little with sharp objects but also to give the continuous high speed shutter a serious workout. Already posted about how well that worked out so won't recap here.
   One of the organizers asked me to shoot some shots of the merchants that they could use as PR for other merchants, so tried to get a little that would fit that. Not really sure I nailed that request, but hopefully there will be something they can use. But as I was doing laps of the lake waiting for fun stuff in the merch booths, I saw a great couple and got one of my favorite shots from the weekend.

    Then it was time for fire photography lab. Spent the rest of Saturday night at the fire circle just shooting away and trying different settings, speeds, etc. I wound up shooting all ambient light, for a couple of reasons. Part of it was I didn't want to break anyone's flow up and annoy them with flashes in their face when I hadn't talked to them about it first. But mostly it was pure laziness. I didn't feel like putting up stands, setting up the remotes, then moving them around every time I wanted to shoot from a different angle. I also figured there would be enough for me to learn without adding the extra complication. I have done a few tries to use flash to capture a still spinner and still get long exposure trails without getting one that I can say nailed it, but when I do that I think I want to actually set up somewhere and get someone to spin just for me to shoot in a controlled environment until I get enough of a feel for it to try it in the wild on that scale. But mostly, it was just me being lazy. Still, I managed to learn a lot.
    For instance- timing is very important for lots of reasons. Even without the flash to stop motion, if I saw a good moment where the spinner was basically still and just moving the tools, I was able to get a decent combo of still spinner with good trails with just ambient light. 1/10 sec seemed to be the magic number for me to do this.

I also found that shooting smaller apertures gave much better images of the flames, but I was amazed at how much variety of light levels different tools put out. Really small fire wouldn't give enough ambient light to really see the spinner with smaller apertures, or even wide open unless I waited until the tool happened to be right in front of the face giving good illumination. For example, this was shot wide open at 1/50 sec f2.8. (iso 500)

Some bigger tools, on the other hand, threw out  a massive amount of light. This shot was 1/30 sec, F22. (iso 12,800) No, I didn't miss a decimal place there. I meant F22.

    Often, there were so many spinners going simultaneously that the circle was actually very well lit, This one was 1/30 Sec F2.8 (ISO 1800)

    Heh, guess that goes to show how quickly I have become spoiled by Excalibur's capabilities in low light, I just called an ISO 1800 shot well lit. Guess that is also a reflection of my typical shooting environment. Actually, as I go back over my pics really looking into settings, I think next time I shoot fire like this I will turn off the auto ISO functionality so I can really see what the light is doing without the camera brain compensating so much. I really love not having to worry about ISO, but don't want to get too used to relying on the crutch.
    I also learned that the smoke haze from a large group of spinners will effect shots, making them look hazy, but 9 times out of 10 I was able to fix that, or at least reduce it significantly by bumping up the black point in post.
   So, overall, it was hot, very very very hot. I was a bit bummed about my shoulder and not getting to really play in any of the workshops, but that was more than made up for by the chance to really spend a weekend shooting and experimenting, and meeting so many awesome (and very photogenic) people.

You can see my full galleries from the weekend at this link, but I will leave you with one last image. This martial artists broke a stack of flaming bricks. It was pretty freaking epic and definitely captured the spirit of awesomeness that permeated the weekend. Glad I was in the right place at the right time to shoot this.

First postings from Ignight Festival... Excalibur isn't just a sword, it's also a Machine Gun! (and a time lapse interval shooting machine...)

  Last weekend I had the pleasure of shooting Ignight Fire and Flow festival in Joshua Tree, Ca. Since my shoulder was hurt and I couldn't really do any spinning, it wound up being an advanced photo lab for me. I had a blast, learned lots of things, got some great shots, reconnected with some old friends and also made some new friends. I will be slowly going through all the images and posting galleries throughout the next week until I get them all up, this is the first installment.

  One quick lesson was that 110 degree temperatures presented an unexpected challenge. I expect metal items left out in direct sunlight to get warm. No surprise there. But I did not expect this to happen to my camera in the short intervals it was dangling from my strap. But it did. So, I decided to keep it in the camera bag and in the shade when I wasn't shooting. The real surprise was that even that didn't help. Pulling the camera out of the bag even when it was kept in the shade it was almost too hot to handle. (I won't even mention the water bottles and trying to drink hot water all day) I was worried about the sensor getting overheated, but it never did. Exalibur handled the heat better than me. But next time I will wear gloves.

  Lessons two and three are expansions on my prior review of the D4. I got to really put a couple of features of the D4 to the test on this trip. First, I decided that since I was in the desert on a weekend with no moon, I would try to capture some star trails. I had tried once previously on a SAR campout, but didn't have any luck. This time came out better. First I tried the "time lapse" mode. What I didn't realize was that the time lapse mode automatically takes all the shots and collapses them into a movie file. This is a cool feature I will have to play with later, but not what I was looking for to create star trails. Thus ended Thursday night. Did a bit more research and manual reading, turns out that what I wanted was interval shooting. So, I set up a roughly 3 hour series of 30 second exposures, wide open on the 24-70mm, pointed at the North Star. Combined them afterwards using the StarStaX App for Mac. You can see some light pollution from passing spinners, and it isn't as clean as I would like, but as a first real attempt at it I am pretty darn satisfied.

   The other feature I finally really got to test out was machine gun mode... continuous high speed shooting. It was so bright and sunny during the day that I had plenty of light to shoot at stupid high shutter speeds, so I headed out to the knife throwing and archery workshops Saturday afternoon. I put Excalibur into machine gun more, and tried to get some shots of knives and arrows in flight. Got lots of good knife shots, managed to get a couple of passable ones at archery. Archery was harder, difficult even shooting 10fps at 1/8000sec. Did the math after talking to one of the instructors, the bows they were using would give roughly a 200 foot per second arrow speed, so in the tenth of a second between frames that arrow would travel roughly 20ft. The knife throwing was also easier to time, it's pretty obvious on a throw when the thrower is going to release, but archers draw and aim, take their time, and if there are tells that let you know when they are about to release, I am not familiar enough to notice them. But still, managed to get a couple of arrows in flight. Something I never managed to do with the D3200.

   

   So, that's the first installment, full galleries will be viewable here as I get them uploaded. Enjoy!

Excalibur needs a new arch nemesis.....

   Ok, despite feeling sick and not really wanting to head down, I have to say I am glad I did. The battle was epic...

Sparks Flew....

   Settings were set. (and reset, and reset, and reset)  Flashes were flashed.  (not mine, but the timing on this was perfect and I managed to capture another shooter blasting away!)

Drinks were drunk. In the end, Excalibur emerged victorious, and I now have best problem you can have as a photographer- too many technically good keeper shots. (good think I have an awesome partner who goes through them and helps me pic the best artistic shots)

     Full gallery and show report coming soon, but initial image review shows that the evil red wash has been defeated!

So, my old enemy.... we meet again......

   Another event at the Ruby Room tonight. Apparently they are soon going to close and remodel or something, the event page says this will be the last show at the Ruby Room in its' present form. Thus, despite the fact that I am sick, my parents are in town, and I have a lot to do, I think I must go out and shoot tonight, because this may be the last chance I get to jump into the ring again and face my arch nemesis down with some new techniques and see if they work. So, dinner with the parents, lots of caffeine, and a battle against the lighting at the Ruby Room. Game on!