Rockin' Out At The Star

Richard Lautens - Staff Photographer - @rlautens

It's funny how assignments can work out.  I hadn't shot a lot of sports this year so far and last week I shot the TFC one day, the Raptors the next shift and the Jays home opener the next day.

This week I shot the band Muse at the ACC one night and my next shift was Green Day.  Muse had a much cooler stage but Green Day had way more energy and fun about them.

Typically the photogs get the first three songs to shoot with no flash from a pit at the foot of the stage and then the security guys kick us out although for Green Day we only got 2 songs.  It's amazing how many frames you can shoot in just a couple of songs.

Here's a couple of pix from Muse:

Cool stage

Classic rock pose from Matthew Bellamy

It's hard to get the whole band in one frame when they don't get together

Matthew Bellamy under the spotlight

Now a couple from Green Day:

Drunk Bunny comes out to warm up the crowd before the band

The crowd loves the bunny.  The quality is a little rough as I had to shoot at about 50,000 iso and still only got 1/60 sec at f2.8.

It used to be that there would be 4 or 5 photogs at these things and now occasionally you get up to 20 or 30 (as we had for Green Day)-I guess they're bloggers.

Lead singer Billie Joe Armstrong does his thing on stage.

Billie Joe with the crowd.

Billie Joe-I loved the Green behind him.

Lead singer Billie Joe Armstrong (left) poses for a photo with a fan who he brought on stage, to the right is bassist Mike Dirnt running in for the photo.

Rock On Toronto!

Richard Lautens-Toronto Star