Congratulations to Otherwise on their new deal with Century Media Records! These guys rock, and they work their tails off. I had the pleasure of shooting the concert last night at Ovation inside Green Valley Ranch, and the band was surprised to receive a visit from the label President, Don Robertson and a gift from the VP of Entertainment for Station Casinos, Judy Alberti.

Here’s a link to the announcement from Century Media Records.

Go pick up some Otherwise music from iTunes (my personal reco’s are Soldiers and I Don’t Apologize) and look for their videos on YouTube. If you like hard rock and heavy metal, you’ll thank me for it.

Blue Oyster Cult – Nov. 18, 2011 at Boulder Station’s Railhead.

Saturday, June 18th was one of those nights where, although I worked by feet sore, I wore the same grin of me as an obnoxious 12 year old. I bought Theatre Of Pain and cranked Smokin’ In The Boys Room about 50 times in a row at night just to irk my parents, I guess. Below you’ll see me, 23 yrs later, 2nd from the left, in between Vince and Nikki from Motley Crue. Later, they signed my Dr. Feelgood LP. Nikki was rocking a sweet Leica camera. I gotta get one of those! I chatted briefly about LPs with Vince and with Nikki about his Heroin Diaries book. Go read that, if you haven’t. I read it in about 36 hours, and it stuck in my thoughts for weeks. He’s one of the most creative minds in entertainment, I think.

Poison went on immediately after the meet and greet session, so I had to haul ass to the photo area – conveniently located 100 ft from the stage. (Sarcasm). Using my Canon 70-200mm prime, I was able to get “in there” somewhat well. Hell, some of the photographers didn’t even sport a DSLR. Wonder how their stuff turned out. Sucks, because every 3rd person in the 100 ft ahead of us had a droid or an iPhone getting the same shots. Whatever. Rules are rules.

CC and Bobby Dall from Poison. Genuinely nice fellas who sounded great on stage.

Motley crashed the party at 9:30, and caught many off guard. No ringmaster-hype, no encores at the end. Just there to kick your ass, which is what they did. They rocked a mix of old and new stuff before settling into the classics for a 90-minute set.

How creepy does Mick Mars look right here? My favorite shot of the night, I think.

This session from Tommy Lee blew 9,000 minds. What else can I say?

Friday June 17th. I think this was the first Reggae show I have had the opportunity to shoot, and what a way to start:  legendary, classic, icons, however you want to describe Steel Pulse, they live up to it. Absolutely awesome live set. Not a frown in the place.

How you feelin’?

Lead guitar, Donovan McKitty. The dude can shred. I bumped into him at the Grand Cafe after the show. What an awesome guy – he picked up our dinner check for us! We chatted about Hawaii, where they just returned from doing 4 shows. I hope he got the photos I sent over on Sunday.

I shot the Goo Goo Dolls on June 3, 2011. Fun show for about 4000 great fans.

Here’s my favorite shots. Let me know what you think of them.

Stay tuned for one hell of a great music summer. On tap: Ted Nugent, ZZ Top, Weezer, BB King, OAR, and many more…

See you at the show!

Nate

This looks like fun. I hope you can join us on Saturday, June 4th at the Pinball Hall Of Fame, from 3-7pm. More details below.

I shoot with pretty great gear. I worked my butt off and spent some pretty pennies for it, too. That said, I was hung out to dry a little at a shoot last Saturday. I have joked before that my gear bag is suited perfectly for a vampire. In other words, I always seem to be shooting in pitch black lighting conditions. (concerts, casinos, evening dinner parties & mixers)

For a while now, in these low-light conditions, my go-to lens (Canon 24-70mm f/2.8 USM) doesn’t Auto Focus at all, it just searches and searches while the great shots pass me by. I missed great shots at each of my last 4 or 5 assignments due to it. Talk about pissing a guy off. First, I dabbled with Servo focus setting and it seemed to be great for antsy, jittery musicians dancing around on stage… until I dumped my photos into Lightroom. Blah. Most of the shots were useless – blurry. Gotta go with the one-shot setting at concerts. At least I do.

Finally, Saturday night, I threw in the towel. Atop a building in pretty poor lit (great for dinner party – lousy for photography, in some cases) I busted out my backup lens (50mm f/1.8) and the zoom (70-200mm f/2.8) to compensate for my wounded wide-angle. Talk about frustration! Zooming with your feet and adjusting for the extra full f-stop down to 1.8 was tricky! I overexposed a few shots of food on white plates, and the super short depth of field meant that one person on the end of the group was out of focus, while the middle of the group was sharp as a tack. I managed to pull off the assignment, and I have received many compliments, which is lucky as hell, and I know it.

I’m in between assignments for a few weeks, so I decided to ship the anti-auto-focus lens to a Canon repair shop in Southern California. Cross your fingers it’s A) fixable and B) doesn’t cost me the sum of my last 4 sessions to fix. Stay tuned….

Here’s some of the photos from the assignment last weekend. Let me know what you think of the shots.

Here’s a collection of shots from January through April 2, 2011. I have been fortunate enough to shoot some really fun shows so far in 2011. Some local musicians who always show their crowds a good time, and some who have sold millions and millions of records. I think my favorite night so far was last Saturday, April 2, where I started out the night shooting the Heart concert at Green Valley Ranch, then migrated to Ovation where Otherwise opened up for Steel Panther, who was visited by special guest, Vince Neil of Motley Crue. Heart sounded phenomenal, and Vince hit well, most of the high notes. It was cool seeing them all, and here’s some of the shots from the show. Enjoy!

Here’s about 60 shots from Red Rock’s new Acoustic Jam night at Rocks Lounge with Peter Love, Dave Ritz and Jeremy Cornwell. I highly recommend this show. It’s good. It’s free. And, there’s beer.

Once again, Flickr is being a pain in the ass. If the full size images don’t load, visit my page on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nateludens/sets/72157625797411837/

Five Bucks.

Everyone said it over and over, because none of us could believe it. Here’s a few shots from today’s sneak peek at T-time at Tbones inside Red Rock. T-time kicks off Monday, December 13th at 5 – and there’s over 50 items that are all – you guessed it – Five Bucks. I work for Station Casinos, but I’d plan on being there anyway. The portions are huge, the drinks and the food are all amazing. Hands down the best Happy Hour in the city, in my personal opinion.