Fab 40

The Fab 40 pay tribute to the original Fab 4 with a free, live performance of “Abbey Road” on Saturday, September 12 at Discovery Green.

40+ (probably closer to 50) local musicians – handpicked by Beatles enthusiasts David Blassingame and Steve Candelari – performed the Beatles’ album “Abbey Road” from beginning to end.

It was an ambitious project. Nearly felled by illness, loss of critical instruments and the weather, it went very well despite all this.

You can see a slideshow of all the photos I took that night by clicking here.

Roy Head

Roy Head is one of my all time favorite performers. He’s a local legend due to his 1965 hit single “Treat Her Right”

Check out the moves on the young Roy Head in this video from 1965

He’s about to turn 70 next month but you’d never know it from the energy level of his live performances.

All shots below with the Sigma 30mm f/1.4 on the Sony Alpha 700

Soul Fest – 2009 – The El Orbits

The current line up of The El Orbits is Thomas Escalante on vocals, Jim Henkel on guitar, Allen Hill on the bass and Eric C. Hughes on the drums. On Saturday night they opened for Roy Head, Barbara Lynn and Archie Bell. They also served quadruple duty as the backing band for each of the acts throughout the entire evening.

For this show I used three different Sigma lenses on the Sony Alpha 700, each of which is represented below.

Sigma 20mm f/1.8 – Click for larger image

Sigma 30mm f/1.4 – Click for larger image

Sigma 10mm f/2.8 Fisheye – Click for larger image

Ruby Throated Hummingbird

This weekend has been a lot of fun photographing the hummers. At one point we had as many as 4 battling for supremacy in skies over the feeders. The most interesting has been what I assume is a male Ruby Throated Hummingbird who comes in much less frequently than the others.

These birds are fiercely territorial. The hummer in my initial batch of photos has laid claim to the feeders. He will sit atop the crook that holds the feeders or in the nearby Meyer’s Lemon Tree and chases off any interlopers that venture into his domain. Sadly, the Ruby Throated gets chased off every time he shows up so we don’t see him often, and when we do see him he only stays for a few moments.

Still, I have managed to capture a few good shots as evidenced in the previous post and here are two more.

In this picture will notice how he strains his neck as he scans for the dominant hummer

And In this picture you can see he doesn’t even land on the perch, choosing instead to hover for a better chance at a quick getaway should the Bully of Hummertown return.

Be sure and click the above images to see a larger, more detailed photo.

I can’t say enough good things about the Sony SAL-70300G lens I have been using. Sharp as a tack and the IQ is phenomenal when using it to focus and track such small and fast moving targets.

The Honeypot

Once the feeders have been up for awhile you get a sense of which of the perches they’ll tend to favorite. This allows me to setup the camera on a tripod, take aim and wait with the wired remote in hand.

This was shot with the flash and using the 70-300G lens

This was shot with no flash using the 100mm f/2.8 Macro lens

And this was with the 500mm Reflex and no flash.