Disco Expressions – Prom Night

The Disco Expressions show/prom night event last weekend was a huge success. Basically, it was a concert at the Houston Continental Club featuring 70’s disco and 80’s new-age/punk/pop and the audience was invited to dress in a prom theme.

Of course you can’t have a prom without adult supervision.
Meet Continental High School Vice-Principal Henkel

Opening act was Molly and the Ringwalds for the 80’s portion of the night.


Jennifer Ringwald


Carrie Ringwald

And a rare sight ladies and gentlemen. A candid photo of Dekan Ringwald!

That’s right, he’s not staring directly at the camera! This must be what those Planet Earth camermen felt like when they captured those rare images of the Snow Leopard in the wild.

Next up, Disco Expressions playing all your 70’s disco favorites.

It’s hard to tell if Jim is about to give me the OK sign, or if he’s about to flick me like a bug.

Paul was in rare form

All in all, another excellent evening. I wanted to shoot audience pictures to capture those in attendance wearing their prom dresses and tuxedos, but they didn’t come out so well. I don’t do well shooting with a flash and the club is too dark to shoot without one.

I did, however, get one outstanding shot.

Hicks pics

Got a photo credit in The Houston Press this week. Not for any of the mazillion photos I’ve been taking lately, oh no. This is a picture of Bill Hicks I shot on my old film camera over 20 years ago at the Comix Annex when he was doing stand up there…

The article is called Funny Business and is available online if you don’t have access to the actual paper. The online photo credit is quite readable but the actual print version you have to practically squint until your eyeballs pop to be able to see the light gold text running along the side border of the photograph that says “Photo courtesy of Jay Lee.”

Still, I’m pretty stoked…and glad I held on to those old pics from my first run at photography.

The rest of the Bill Hicks shots are available in my gallery.

Houston Roller Derby

The Houston Roller Derby has been generating quite a lot of buzz lately. Seems that you can’t turn around in this city without bumping into someone who is either a roller derby girl or one of the myriad volunteers, hanger’s on or ever growing minions of rabid roller derby fans.

I work with a roller derby girl, my friend Bill Shirley puts together The Colonel’s Roller Derby Roundup, a combination blog and podcast (of all things) with David Beebe, there’s Myspace after Myspace page for leagues, teams, team members, volunteers and fans. Roller derby seems to be everywhere.

It has been suggested on several occasions, by those who know my love of photography and are affiliated with the derby, that I try my hand at some derby photography. I finally decided to follow up and I contacted the organizers and offered to come out and shoot on spec, the idea being that if I produced pictures they liked and could be used to promote the derby I might be afforded the title of Official Houston Roller Derby Photographer. Basically that would mean that I would have full photographic access to all aspects of the local derby.

This past Sunday I made my way to The Verizon Wireless Theater for the bout. I arrived pretty early so I could get my credentials and get the lay of the land. I wanted to check out the layout and get familiar with the lighting.

After a bit of experimenting I decided to shoot with my 50mm 1.4 lens. I thought this would be the best for no flash and fast action. As it turned out, I got some great portrait shots.

But I struggled with the action shots. Shooting without a flash meant that I had to try to time the shots for when the subject was going to be illuminated. Also, the 50mm lens is challenging at extended distances. I can crop to increase the size of the main subject, but the results are not as good as I would like.

Still, they weren’t all bad…

Houston Roller Derby
Click for full size

Houston Roller Derby
Click for full size

Houston Roller Derby
Click for full size

With a bit more practice I think I can nail it down. I may whip out the Tamron AF 28-75mm f2.8 XR Di lens next time and see how it performs in these conditions.

The response from the derby organizers and the members has been positive. I have been asked to come back and shoot again, not only at the bouts but at other derby events.

We’ll see how the schedule shapes up. I would like to explore this further.

Tron

Gearing up for our 12th anniversary, Technology Bytes Radio is teaming up with The Petrol Station and St. Arnold Brewery to bring you Tron, the original geek movie, projected in all it’s gigantic glory outdoors and on the back wall.

The event will be Friday, July 1st. and admission is FREE!

The movie should fire up around 9 PM but feel free to come on out anytime after 7:30 and join the crew of Technology Bytes for some brews and a very geeky evening.

The Petrol Station is located at 985 Wakefield Dr. here in Houston, TX.
Click here for a map

Phone number is (713) 957-2875

What’s wrong with Clear Channel?

In a recent blog post, Michael Garfield – the yadda yadda Texan asks “And what’s wrong with Clear Channel?”

This was in response to a comment made by Mark Cuban of Blog Maverick fame when he said of Youtube’s recent announcement about paying for content :

Youtube immediately went from a small but interesting community for its original content, to basically being just like Clear Channel, responsible for programming its different “formats” with the “best” possible content that creates the greatest number of eyeballs and maximizes advertising revenue. It’s big business, just like Clear Channel

You can read Mark’s post for yourself.

While I am sure Mr. Garfield’s question was rhetorical, I can’t help but respond, being a public radio guy and all. Just doing a simple Google search on the term “What’s wrong with Clear Channel” reveals some very tasty tidbits.

Let’s look what people are saying of Clear Channel, the world’s largest radio station operator.

WHAT’S WRONG WITH RADIO?
With corporate ownership and a new form of payola strangling play-lists, listeners are tuning out.

By Greg Kot, Rolling Stone Magazine

At a time when a handful of radio corporations are making more money than ever, dissatisfaction with the quality of music programming has reached a breaking point. People are listening to radio less, and the reason is simple: The days of local radio breaking new records, taking chances on unknown acts and responding to it’s audience’s interests have all but disappeared.

Read more…

EFF Kills Bogus Clear Channel/Live Nation Patent

San Francisco – The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) has announced it will revoke an illegitimate patent held by Clear Channel Communications after a campaign by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

The patent — owned by Instant Live, a company formerly owned by Clear Channel, and now owned by Live Nation — covered a system and method of creating digital recordings of live performances. Clear Channel claimed the bogus patent created a monopoly on all-in-one technologies that produce post-concert digital recordings and threatened to sue those who made such recordings. This locked musical acts into using Clear Channel technology and blocked innovations by others.

Salon.com – Radio’s Big Bully

Looking for classy radio programming? Don’t look here. The company is known for allowing animals to be killed live on the air, severing long-standing ties with community and charity events, laying off thousands of workers, homogenizing playlists and a corporate culture in which dirty tricks are a way of life.

Check the results of the search yourself. There’s more. And I didn’t even touch on the nasty ways that Clear Channel attempts to squelch our first amendment right to free speech. Google search the term Clear Channel free speech, there’s a good read for you.

I’ll just leave you with the words of Lowry Mays, CEO of Clear Channel Communications as quoted at Freepress.net:

“If anyone said we were in the radio business, it wouldn’t be someone from our company. We’re not in the business of providing news and information. We’re not in the business of providing well-researched music. We’re simply in the business of selling our customers products.”

You just might need to ask yourself how far and to what expense they are willing to go to achieve that end.

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