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Carbon Leaf @ Highline Ballroom, NYC – 5.27.09

I have never seen Carbon Leaf before but they put on one hell of a show! I liked their performance at the Highline Ballroom so much, I’ll be seeing them again on July 17th at the Loft in Poughkeepsie, NY. The band is currently on tour to support their newest album “Nothing Rhymes with Woman,” which is out on Vanguard Records. The album is similar to Love, Loss, Hope, Repeat and that’s not a bad thing at all!

For a full review of the show, please visit my review over at ReadJunk.com here. On the photography side of things, I enjoyed taking pictures of the band. Barry, the frontman of Carbon Leaf, was a true showman. He was hamming it up bigtime and loved every minute of it. His style of singing and performing is a photographer’s dream! Just all the different faces, poses and hand gestures made for some great photographs. Unlike Alternate Routes, the band was spread out on the stage more so I needed to use my telephoto lens a lot. The lighting at Highline Ballroom is good, you just have to get the members at the right time or you get some nasty backlighting effects in your shots.

There wasn’t a photo pit at the venue so I had the chance to take pictures the entire show. Down side to that is I had people standing in front of me so it was tough getting full shots of each band member. I sat in the same spot the entire time and didn’t want to move around and disturb the crowd like some other photographer was doing. I try to get to clubs early enough to get first row by the stage; but the show wasn’t going to start until 2 hours after the doors opened. I hate when shows are like that. Anyway, I’m not sure I’ll be shooting the Loft concert or not, but if you get the chance to see Carbon Leaf on this tour, do so! Their new album is really good and I can’t stop listening to it.

Here are my favorite shots from the set:

(wish this was focused on the eyes but it was happening too quickly. oh well)

To see all the photos in the set, click here.