The other five budding photographers!

As mentioned in my previous post, I am part of the Budding Photographers program organized by Esplanade for Baybeats 2012.
Random thought: every time I tell someone I am a part of the ‘Budding’ Photographers program, I keep thinking that my body would spontaneously sprout flowers :3

In any case under the program, I have access to shoot Baybeats!
Shooting Baybeats is more or less about gig photography and I had not really shot an actual gig as compared to the other participants in the program.

My side of the story was that I received the EDM from Esplanade looking for ‘budding photographers’ while I was in Hanoi!
I was bored and the cat was on my lap so I said to myself ok why not give this a program a try. Like I’ll get in.
I had to submit 5 images from my portfolio and at that point of time I only brought 24 images with me so guess who submitted images from Thaipusam 8D
I am really fortunate that the rest of my portfolio on my website saved me :3
As apparently for previous years, people who submitted anything that was not related to gig photography got their images thrown out>.>

Actually, it was kind of embarrassing as well since the other participants had backgrounds in gig photography and what not so when they revealed part of our portfolio here mine really stood out…

In any case, I was so surprised when I got the phone call from Esplanade telling me that I was selected barely a day after I returned from my travels! And am so glad that Esplanade and my mentor Aloysius gave me the chance to be part of the program!

Cute sailor boys<3
Pep talk, band portrait!

Love me butch, band portrait. sort of (:

There are 4 different stages in Baybeats and I covered 3 of them. The first one is at the concourse or the Chill out Stage where acoustic/ electronic sets are play.

Carlos Castaño from the Philippines, Chill Out Stage.
This guy does a mean version of John Mayer’s ‘Slow Dancing in a Burning room’ <3

Next is the Arena where things get a little more exciting with more energetic sets.

Inch Chua and the Metric System at the Arena.
Love love love her set!

Run Neon Tigers!

Finally, we have the Power House where the crazy stuff happens.
Having access to the photo pit in the powerhouse is a little intimidating as there was a whole row of photographers behind me who would kill to get into the pit…

Embrace Them Ghost

Truth be told, the kind of concerts I go to ranges from classical to rock but I’ve never ever been to a metal gig and my first shoot at the Powerhouse was Embrace them Ghost, a metal band…
It was definitely a brand new kind of music for me but it’s still not going into my iTunes.

PLOT from Thailand.
Don’t know what they were singing but rocked out anyways.

Copy Machine

I am a huge fan of Copy Machine from Korea. Not only were they full of energy throughout the entire set, their songs were just infectious! So much love for them!
helps that their bassist is really cute 8D

Copy Machine

Copy Machine’s bassist<3

This shot of Copy Machine appeared in the Straits Times on 3rd July(:
They cropped my image T_T

Great Spy Experiment

Great Spy Experiment

Plain Sunset. Love them<3

Plain Sunset!
Yes, he played like that for the encore!

In Each Hand a Cutlass

In Each Hand a Cutlass.
Literately a double bass!

King Ly Chee

King Ly Chee is another metal band from Hong Kong and they are a curious mix of people.
They have a Pakistani as their lead singer and although they are from Hong Kong, they perform their songs in English.
According to them ‘We do not sing about killing our mothers!’ and no, none of their songs were slow at all. They were absolutely hilarious, and are a really incredible band to shoot if you are in the photo pit.
I had to shoot this from the crowd as I no longer had access to the photo pit thus I did not get that many images of the band playing itself as half the time, I was trying not to get involved in this:

Mosh pit.

Wikipedia says: Moshing, in a strict sense, is a style of dance whose participants push or slam into each other.

Tell me, lovely people. In which universe are they dancing…
And there’s the all-time favourite of crowd surfing:

Crowd surfing

The reason why I could not really shoot anything properly was also due to the fact that I decided to use the 135mm thinking I could move backwards but no way am I moving without getting caught in the mosh pit. Thank heavens a friend of mine in the photo pit passed me his 24-70mm and my flash so I could get least get some crowd shots and that was when the madness happened.
I. Got. Swept. Away.

Mosh tornado or whatever you want to call it where people start running around in circles…

Oh my lord. It was one of the scariest shit in my life because if I fell, I’ll definitely get trampled on by the hoards of people pushing me from the back and I was not even at the side where I could run to safety, I was in the middle of it where there were no safe spots. Oh and did I mentioned that the 2000 dollars plus lens on my camera was not mine… siaoliao.jpec

Run for your life!

What an insane but incredible experience that I somehow managed to outrun the crowd>.>
In any case, King Ly Chee was brilliant as with all the other bands who performed. I am so fortunate to be able to listen to them live.

In the end, Baybeats is about celebrating friendship and this is the ‘thank you status’ that almost everyone posted on their Facebook.
I’m a little old school and I can’t share my entire experience through Facebook hence the blog. Here it is anyway(:

First and foremost, a huge thanks to Aloysius for the crits and tips.
My fellow budding photographers: Lionel, Zhi Wei, Danny, Donald and Asyraf. It was really fun shooting with you guys(: PIZZA PARTEH SOON!
Fellow DA Artist Timothy, thanks for all the tips in the photo pit!
Thank you Rueven for your 24-70mm crc vip member yo 8D
Huge thanks to the Esplanade team: Esther, Melissa, Waipeng for the comfy chairs in the office, opening the doors for me and the packet drinks!
For the alumni, nice meeting you guys and for everyone else whom I’ve not mention thank you for this wonderful experience!

I can’t wait for Baybeats 2013(: