The Statue of Liberty Never Looked Finer

The Statue of Liberty

My wife and I visited the Statue of Liberty over the Thanksgiving holiday. Even though I grew up just outside New York city, I had never visited Liberty Island before. We reserved tickets on-line the previous evening and boarded the first Ferry ride at 8:30 a.m. on Saturday morning. It was a spectacular day - not a cloud in the sky and very little haze.

As the ferry approached Liberty Island, I went up to the top deck to take unobstructed photos. Being morning, the sun was low in the sky providing an excellent directional light on to statue. The ferry does a great job of coming in close to the island at a slow pace, and then circling the front of the island to provide views of the statue from both sides. I stopped taking photos as the ferry got close to the dock, and then realized you could see both the Statue of Liberty and the New York City skyline together - a very nice Kodak moment.

The Statue of Liberty and the New York City skyline.

On Liberty Island

Close up of the hand holding the torch of the Statue of Liberty.

After departing the ferry, we walked around the front of the statue. It was great fun to zero in on parts of the statue as opposed to whole thing. The picture at the top of this article was my favorite. By only seeing a part of her arm, you  get the sense that Miss Liberty is really stretching her arm very hard to hold up the torch as high as possible. When you see more of the arm, it doesn't give that same impression. A good lesson of what cropping can do.

View From the Pedestal

After taking in the statue from all the vantage points on the island, we entered the pedestal. In there is a very nice museum taking you through the history of the statue, including early sculpted renditions as well as showing the process how the artisans translated the final design into copper sheets. Quite an undertaking because each section had to have a wooden negative mold produced which the artisan then used to shape the copper sheet. After the museum, it was up 154 steps to highest point on the pedestal. We could not go up to the crown because those tickets are reserved on-line and were gone long before we contemplated visiting the Statue of Liberty. This is the closest you can get to the outside of the statue and is where I took the picture from below of the hand holding the torch. I have always marveled at how well this part of the sculpture was executed. Miss Libery's grip on the torch is firm, but not too tight. I think this impression is formed because her fore finger is not wrapped around the handle but is instead resting on the underside of the torch platform. Go find a picture of her right hand and see for yourself.

Sillouette of the back of the Statue of Liberty with the sun over the torch.

The Sillouette

As we walked around the back of the pedestal I took a picture of the shadow of the statue stretched along the ground. It occured to me that this also presented an opportunity to take a sillouette picture of the statue from behind with the sun placed directly over the torch. So I quickly ran down the stairs and to the back of the island, and snapped off a series of photos with the sun back lighting the statue. The best photo is shown here. The sun flare is completely natural - no Photoshop work involved at all. After I got home, I was curious to see if others had executed this same shot. A quick search on the Internet showed several variations, but the closest one I saw exposed the shot differently so you could see the torch itself with the sun brightly shining through the railing.

The Teapot

The little girl exclaimed "Mommy! Why is she holding a teapot?"

The best comment of the day came from a little girl my wife overheard as we were walking around the base of the statue. She said "Mommy! Why is she holding a teapot?" We both looked up and, lo and behold, but doesn't the flame of the torch look like a tea pot?! Wow, from the mouth's of babes... I could only imagine how Frederic Barholdi would have reacted upon revealing the statue for all to see for the first time and then some child asking him why the lady was holding a teapot. Ha!

New England Patriots Face Off Against the Super Bowl Champion New Orlean Saints in Training Camp

Tuesday, August 10, 2010
I attended the New England Patriots training camp session today at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, MA. For those who may not know, the Patriots open up their training facility to the public for free during training camp season (click here for a detailed schedule). A good number of people show up to watch, but the facility is plenty large enough to easily accommodate everyone. I can't remember having an easier time driving into the stadium for an event. We parked literally right next to the stadium and the practice field. Again, just to emphasize, this was a free event so there was no charge for parking.

Vendors

A ton of vendors were set up along the path to get to the training field, but their sales pitches weren't too onerous. Several had offers to exchange contact information for a chance to win some Patriot tickets - not a bad deal. The Patriots also had food vendors set up with the usual stadium fare for sale.

 

The Venue

The Patriots have a set of stands set up along one sideline that spans the full length of one of the practice fields. They are not too tall. Probably similar in height to what a visitor's stands would be at a high school football game. To complete the scene they had vendors hawking food and drinks throughout the stands all day, so you didn't have to leave your seat to get something. In addition to the stands, people sat on a grassy hill area located in one of the end zones.
Since it was open seating, everything was very relaxed with people moving about to get a better of view of something that piqued their interest. As you can imagine, the entire field was being used for a wide variety of drills simultaneously. There were plenty of uniformed police and Patriot security in the area, but, thankfully, there wasn't much need for them.

The Amazing Wes Welker

Once I found my seat, I settled in to watching the offense. My favorite drill was the passing drill. It was great to be able to concentrate on how the receivers ran their patterns - how well they entered and exited their breaks, gaging their speed, and seeing how the quarterbacks anticipated the receiver's moves. This drill amped up considerably when the Saints defensive halfbacks came in to defend the Patriots. The biggest roar from the crowd came when Wes Welker made a multiple cut/stop move to create significant separation from the defender and then caught one of his patented passes from Brady over the middle. VERY impressive, especially considering what happened to Wes's knee eight months ago. He looked good enough to play in a game. Simply remarkable


Tom Brady connected on one very long (60+ yard) pass play to Randy Moss who got behind two defenders (see photo) - the biggest play of the day.

Just as you see during the games, Randy and Tom were always together. It seemed as though everytime I found one of them in the camera viewfinder there was the other one right beside. Tom has often said that he enjoys Randy as a teamate and one would certainly believe that after watching them at practice.

 

6'0" 209 lbs

I don't know why, but Drew Brees appeared to be VERY small compared to everyone else on the field. Is he really six feet tall? I kept doubting myself that it was really him who was running the first-string offense (the pre-season jerseys don't have names on them). I wasn't completely satisfied until I got the chance to review the photos at home (see photo above).

Autograph Session

Towards the end of the scrimmage, all at once the entire crowd in the stands moved to the first row. I got up looking for what must have been Tom Brady approaching the crowd, but that was not to be. What I learned was that everyone was anticipating the players coming over to sign autographs at the end of the practice session. Indeed, at least half of dozen players came by to sign autographs. I thought this was really great. Laurence Maroney and Brandon Meriweather were among the stars who came over. Even Reggie Bush swung by to sign autographs. However, practice wasn't over. This was when the third-stringers took the field, but absolutely nobody was paying attention to them. I felt kinda sad for them, but I wound up ingoring them just like everyone else as I was vying for a great shot of one of the stars. It certainly reminds you that this is a star-driven game. Check out more photos at renderedgemedia.com.

Exploding Nikon Lens

Friday, July 15, 2010
I never expected to see this.
While hiking the Hi-Cannon Trail up to the top of Cannon Mountain in the Franconia Notch region of the New Hampshire White Mountains, my camera swung around and caught a thick, dead branch right in the middle of my Nikkor 18-200mm zoom lens. I've hiked with my Nikon camera equipment all my life, from the Grand Canyon to Glacier National Park to the Czech Republic, and I've occassionally knocked the equipment around - but that's precisely why I love Nikon equipment: It's built to last. But this time the sound I heard was very different from the normal ping's you hear when the equipment hits something.

 

The Crescent Roll Sound

The best description I can ascribe to the sound I heard (and felt) was that it reminded me of when you pop open a container of Pillsbury Crescent Rolls. I looked down at the camera, and, to my horror, I saw something that I never dreamed that I would ever see: The zoom lens was popped open right in the middle (see photo above). Yikes! This was NOT good.

The outside of the lens was just fine - there wasn't even a mark on the barrel of the lens indicating where the contact with the log occurred. Not a scratch much less a dent. The glass was absolutely perfect too. However, there it was. A completely useless, very expensive, high-quality lens exposing its inner workings to me.

 

What Was The Cause?

I suspect what probably happened was that there was a micro-fracture or defect within the lens that left it vulnerable to the perfect strike causing it to completely fail and spring open when it impacted the log. If true, I probably could have hit the lens in other places multiple times and never have seen this catastrophic failure (in fact, I'm sure I banged the lens around plenty of times before this particular incident occurred).

 

Before and After

Just to make sure to highlight what happened to the lens, I took a photo with the broken lens next to a new one so you can see the differences (see second photo).

 

Can It Be Fixed?

When I went to the store to purchase a replacement lens the salesman thought the broken lens was repairable, but he wasn't sure for how much. I do wonder how much Nikon would charge because overall the lens is in great shape (it's only two years old). You can see from the last photograph that the glass is in beautiful shape as is the rest of the lens body. As I said earlier, there was no outwardly sign that the lens took any blow whatsoever when it popped open. I'll have to do a little research, but it might be a good idea to put the lens up for sale and let someone else send it in for repair. In the end, they may wind up with a great lens at an unbelievable price.
Anyone else have any lens horror stories to share? Please post them here. I look forward to the dialog.

Scott Sigler ANCESTOR Book Reading in Cambridge, MA

Friday, June 25, 2010
I finally got the chance to meet the Future Dark Overload (FDO) himself, Scott Sigler (www.scottsigler.com), in person at Pandemonium Books & Games (www.pandemoniumbooks.com) on Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010, where he was doing a reading from his latest novel, ANCESTOR. I video taped the event and posted it on YouTube.

There are several video segments to view. All tolled, the reading and question & answer session lasted almost 70 minutes. This meant chopping the video up into 10-minute chunks to adhere to the YouTube time constraints. After producing the seven (7) segment project, I realized that not everyone may want to sit through the whole thing, so I edited the event down to 10 minutes. This summary video contains a condensed version of the reading and the signing, but none of the question and answer period.





For the intro and outro, I used the pre- and post-roll video Scott Sigler produced for the ANCESTOR video contest (www.scottsigler.com/videocontest). The challenge was to modify the video to remove the references to the contest and insert text referencing the book tour. I pulled the footage into After Effects and overlayed the new text to cover the original text. It's not nearly as clean as the original, but it's only on screen for a short time so I think it works quite well.


I did have moments of trepidation as I edited Scott's reading. I kept thinking that he might not approve of what I kept in the video -- that he would have edited it differently based on his desire to communicate certain things to the viewer. I hope Scott approves!

 The final bonus of the evening was having Scott sign my copies of ANCESTOR -- both my new one and the original published in soft cover many years ago by Dragon Moon Press (www.dragonmoonpress.com). After the reading, everyone headed over to Tommy Doyles in Cambridge (www.tommydoyles.com) for beers.

Digital Display Video Loop Installed at PGA Center for Advanced Dentistry

Friday, June 11, 2010
We recently installed a 28-minute video loop in the PGA Center for Advanced Dentistry, the dentist office of Dr. Jay Ajmo, (www.pgadentistry.com) located in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. Dr. Ajmo has a state-of-the art facilty with dual 42" displays located in each exam room. However, Dr. Ajmo felt the displays were being under utilized. Their primary function was to display patient x-rays - a huge improvement over the ancient way of placing the x-rays up against a fluorescent backlight. With the computer and digital display, Dr. Ajmo could readily zoom in and point out areas of interest to the patient.

Taking Advantage of the Technology
However, the time used by Dr. Ajmo's team to display x-rays to the patient was almost negligiable compared to the time the displays were available. Thus they created PowerPoint(tm) presentation to run continously on the display, but it was not very engaging. It would also be interrupted all the time whenever the computer was used to do something else. Patients would often request that the photo of someone's teeth be removed from the screen after staring at it for fifteen minutes! The solution we proposed was to develop a customized video loop for Dr. Ajmo.

Personalized Commercial

We sat down with Dr. Ajmo to discuss the scope of the video, and we sketched out the topics that he wanted to present to his patients. There were to obvious patient success stories, but we also wanted to take the opportunity to educate his patients to avoid having the video come across as a pushy commercial. Thus, we developed segments that show the consequences of non-treatment, the close tie between good dental health and your overall body health, and many treatment options, including the unique IV-sedation that Dr. Ajmo offers.

The final production is a 28-minute video loop that takes Dr. Ajmo's patients on a journey. It makes extensive use of text and graphic effects to keep the viewer's attention without being over the top. Each individual segment in the loop is kept under 2 minutes to make sure the information on the screen is always fresh. That way something new is always just around the corner in case any particular topic is not interesting for the viewer. Similarly, we felt it was important to make the video loop long so it would only repeat once during a patient's visit.

The patient stories make use of direct quotes from the patients themselves to help personalize the story to the viewer. Someone who can relate to a situation is more likely to stay engaged with the story and be receptive to absorb the treatment options performed. We then close the stories with strong visuals of how the patient looks post-treatment.

The overall look of the video was kept clean and bright to promote a fresh, positive sensation to the viewer. The animations to communicate the treatment options and consequences of non-treatment were also designed to be simple and clean. We also included a soft-sell call to action for the patients throughout the video to think about referring friends and family to Dr. Ajmo's office for dental treatment.

Trade Show Video on Display at the International Microwave Symposium

A video I produced for UltraSource (www.ultrasource.com), one of the most advanced thin film circuit and interconnect manufacturers, is running in their trade show booth at the 2010 International Microwave Symposium (http://www.ims2010.org). The video was designed to complement the marketing message throughout the booth by focusing in on customer challenges, the UltraSource solutions and the benefits those solutions provide.

You can see the full video under the "Trade Show" section of our website's portfolio page (http://www.renderedgemedia.com/portfolio).

Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow at the Beacon Theater December 11, 1975

Monday, May 17, 2010

I just learned from a close friend that Ronnie James Dio died yesterday (http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/music_blog/2010/05/ronnie-james-dio-dies-sabbath-rainbow-singer.html). How sad. He was a favorite rock and roll front man of mine. Excellent rock voice. Good song writer.

Back in the 70's I was a huge Deep Purple fan, so when Ritchie Blackmore left the group to form Rainbow, my friends and I were all over their debut album. Then, as luck would have it, we scored great seats to see their United States debut performance at the Beacon Theater in New York City. We had first row seats in the balcony. I brought my Dad's trusty Pentax and two lenses, and a couple of rolls of film.

Lessons Learned

At this show I was still an amateur with regards to shooting concerts. The light meter in the camera was never right because it would always be averaging all that blackness surrounding the subject. It took several shows of mistakes before I built up the proper knowledge, and confidence, to set the exposure correctly for a given film speed. So, at this show, I had a ton of shots that were exposed brilliantly, but were very blurry. I could have easily rested the long lens right on the balcony rail, but I don't think I did that given the results.
The opening act was Argent. A completely forgettable performance - even the extended performance of their one great hit, "Hold Your Head Up," was a yawner. The crowd just wanted to see Rainbow.
I loved Rainbow's staging. From the iconic rainbow arc of lights framing the stage, the backdrop of the painting from their debut album, and Blackmore's dual stacks of Marshall amplifiers, it was just what you would want a rock and roll show to look like. I always wondered what the tape recorder was used for behind Blackmore.

 I was astonished to find that an audio recording of this performance is available on the web. It was indeed quite a kick to listen to it after all these years. I had remembered that the show had a great, long rocking song which was new at the time. I later summized it to be "Stargazer" from their second album, but I really didn't know until I saw the set list for concert which confirmed it. How cool! I also remembered and was impressed by Cozy Powell playing to the "1812 Overture" during his drum solo. I thought that was a clever innovation for the time.

Blackmore did not throw his Strat in the air at the end of the show or smash it, but it was a great performance. A few years later I saw Rainbow again at the Capital Theater in New Jersey. There Blackmore did toss his guitar very high in the air - and I got photos of it. I'll post those photos in a future blog post.

Display Installed at Red Sky Restaurant & Lounge

This week we installed a digital display in the store front window of the Red Sky Restaurant & Lounge (www.redskyboston.com) located in Boston, MA. It combines the food video and food beauty photography created earlier with information about the restaurant, including their menu, function rooms, and daily specials to produce a dynamic experience that will catch the eye of potential customers as they pass by the restaurant.

Located directly across the street from the famed Faneuil Hall Marketplace, Red Sky gets a ton of foot traffic passing by the restaurant as people visit the large array of shops, food, and entertainment. With 44 pushcarts, 18 full-service restaurants, and 35 food stalls, this is a highly competitive food-selling situation. Patrons love to look before they buy, but full-service restaurants typically only display a paper copy of their menu in the window. This leaves it up to the customer's imagination as to whether the food is compelling and desireable. With the digital display, people can not only actually "see" the menu, but they instantly realize their food is prepared to order with fresh ingredients.

After installation, it was great to see people become transfixed watching the display. Between the food video, motion graphics and text, the experience is very up beat and interesting. After asking one of the patrons what they thought of the display, he responded "I think I want a burger!

To install the display, a Hannspree 23" full HD LCD display, a custom bracket was fabricated by NAB Tool & Die to mount the display directly to the inside of the window. They also fabricated a custom shelf that was mounted at the top of the window close to the ceiling to hold the Blu-ray player. For convenience & absolutely no maintenance, the Blu-ray disc was authored such that the video would play instantly upon power up and then loop continuously. No fumbling with the remote or teaching the staff how to select the correct video. Simply powering up the player launches the video.

The content for the digital display was chosen specifically to enhance food sales. By showing the customer how great the food is we expect to influence them in a positive way to make a food purchase they were perhaps not planning to do. For instance, if someone had it in their mind that they wanted to have wings before coming to the restaurant, upon seeing how great the Seared Ahi Tuna looked they might upgrade their appetizer order. Similarly, someone already hungry for an appetizer might see the burger or steak tips and upgrade to an entree instead.

By showing how the food is freshly prepared without the use of microwaves or frozen products, the customers instantly form a positive bond to the food which creates a strong desire to try it. The deal is sealed by elegantly photographing the plated product. Who can resist that wonderful piece of bacon or the melted cheese oozing down the side of the burger?

With the aggressive pricing of HD displays and Blu-ray players, installing a digital display becomes a very attractive, realistic proposition for almost any sized business. For well under $1000 you can have a 50" LCD or plasma display that will attract attention from across the street and draw people to your store front. By creating custom content, anyone can have their own commercial running 24/7 to sell your products or services even when the business is closed.

For more information about how we can do this for you, please visit www.renderedgemedia.com.

Tea Cozy Product Photo Published in Philadelphia Inquirer!

The Philadelphia Inquirer recently published an article entitled "Tea-He: More Men Are Finding That This Other Brew Is Their Bag" that mentioned the product of a local Windham, NH company called Thistledown Cozies (www.thistledowncozies.com). A few months prior I had done an extensive photo shoot of their products, so they were ready to provide the newspaper with a nice product photo that they placed in the center of the layout (see left).

I've enlarged the area with the photo and the photo credit so it is easier to see.

Sadly, the on-line version doesn't use the same layout, but rather a photo gallery where the product photo is last in the series.

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/image/86128057.html

iPad Underwhelming - First Impressions

I stopped by the Apple store yesterday to check out the new Apple iPad. The store was reasonably busy, but not anymore traffic than I've seen normally (who knows what it was like during opening weekend!). They had a table set up with eight (8) iPads to play with, and not all of them were being used.

After all the hype and hearing the initial impressions, I expected to love it -- but I didn't.

PRO'S

The iPad is VERY responsive. No hesitation when you select an icon, swipe your hand across, or even tilt the device every which way. This is an improvement over the iPod Touch, especially in the area when you re-orient the device. I find the iPod Touch delays too long when you tilt it from landscape to protrait mode, but the iPad was instant and dealt with going upside down as well - a really effective, natural feature when you give it to someone to else.

I thought the book reader application was very nice. The pages flip with ease. You can instantly change the size and type of font. And I thought is was very easy to read.

I was able to successfully play HD YouTube videos. The only disappointment being that 16x9 videos are letterboxed (those black stripes running across the top and bottom of the video). This is because the aspect ratio of the iPad display is not 16x9. I don't know why this negatively effected me, but I was not happy about it.

The photo gallery applications were very nice. Given what Apple has done in this arena this was expected, but they did an excellent good job here. You can even turn the device into a picture frame viewer.

CON'S

I was perplexed on the best way to type on the device. In landscape mode, the virtual keyboard is easy to line up your hands, but you have to lay the device down on something to type. This was less effective in portrait mode (due to the smaller width allocated for the virtual keyboard), so I found myself holding the device with my left hand and poking the keys with my right. Not very quick, but effective. I then tried holding the iPad phone-style with both hands and typing with my two thumbs. This actually worked well, but I found myself NOT gravitating to using it this way because for the most part you are browsing info which means using one hand primarily to hold the device while the other does the navigation. It takes too long to switch the position of the hands. Perhaps over time this would become natural.

Even though the device is very thin, somehow I wanted it be thinnner. Is that crazy? It's heft was more than I expected. My hand/arm became fatigued only after five minutes of usage. I know that time will extend as one uses the device more and more, but I wasn't happy about that part of the experience, probably because it was unexpected. I'm sure future versions will be lighter -- just look at the history of it iPod.

It's really hard to get good advice on which memory configuration would be best to buy. We all know more storage is better, but it does come at a premium, so it pays to understand how much you really need. The Apple representatives were not able to help make this decision. For instance, it would be nice to know how much storage is required to store an HD movie on the device. This is key because if I were to use it as a sales device, I would need to be able to store my portfolio on it and I would like to know the limits.

SUMMARY

The iPad I did not generate any real excitement within me. I did not have a moment when I said "I have to have this!" like when I saw the first Macintosh in 1984.

I'm planning on looking at the iPad again, this time going deeper into the applications and try and do some serious browsing with the device (to get more typing in). If I buy one, I would certainly get the 3G version so it can always be connected to the internet. Stay tuned.

Amazing Closeup of Dew on Moss

On my way out the door this morning, the dew on the moss caught my eye, and I took this photo. Spring is coming!

Food Styling at Amelia's Restuarant in Gainesville, FL

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Yesterday I filmed a series of instructional videos and captured food beauty shots for Chef Andy Fass, owner of Amelia's Restaurant (www.ameliasgainesville.com) located in Gainesville, Florida. Our goal with this client was to create compelling website content that will attract people to come to the website, come back often, build his brand and reputation, and, ultimately, convert website visitors into customers . The videos consisted of Chef Andy teaching people how to create classic Italian dishes, insightful cooking techniques, how to determine food quality, and communicate his restaurant's cooking philosophy

Video Camcorders Used

We shot the videos with two camcorders, one on a Steadicam to handle the main shots and the second camera handheld to dive in for those extreme close ups. It was challenging working in the relatively tight space of a kitchen augmented with light

s. I had to be accutely aware of the light angles to avoid casting unwanted shadows onto the subjects while panning, pushing, and backing up the Steadicam. Oh, and avoiding getting the other camera operator or the audio technician with his boom into the shot.

Audio Considerations
Audio-wise this shoot was also a challenge with the refrigerator and fan motors whirring constantly in the backgro

und. We recorded Chef Andy with both a lapel lavalier microphone and a boom microphone handled by a roving technician. We also have the audio from the Steadicam camcorder which recorded the audio using its built-in mics. We monitored the audio as we shot, adjusting the levels as required, so we expect to get excellent resultant audio from mixing the various sources.

Organic Food Styling

For the still photography, I set up studio strobe lights on site i

n a corner of the restaurant. As Chef Andy completed the meals for the video, we then paused the video shoot to take the still images of the food.

As consistent with our trademark, all the food beauty photography was executed on the dishes just as they were prepared by the chef. Nothing inedible (or even edible, like oil) was added or spayed onto to the food. They represent the precise dish created by the chef that was created in the video footage.

It's great to see the positive reaction to the still images of the food as I take them even though the plated food is right there in front of them! It just reaffirms that the true drama and beauty can only be brought out with the proper balance and direction of the food itself, the lighting, mirrors, and reflectors.

Landscape Videos running at Southern New Hampshire Home & Landscape Show

Two videos I produced for landscaping companies are running now at the 2010 Southern New Hampshire Home and Landscape Show at Rockingham Park, Salem, NH. The photo shows their booth with two 42" displays running the videos. Both companies are great, family-run businesses that have been around over 25 years. Ron Libby & Sons (http://ronlibbyandson.com) and Groundhog Landscaping (http://www.groundhognh.com).

My Photos on www.ledzeppelin.com!

My Led Zeppelin photos have now been published on LedZeppelin.com!

As of this date, my photo is on the lead page of the photo gallery.

Clicking on the thumbnail and the same photo is the link to the 1976-1977 section.

Clicking on this thumbnail takes you to the 1976-77 collection and my photos are the first nine.

Led Zeppelin at Madison Square Garden June 11, 1977

I was a Junior in High School when Led Zeppelin booked Madison Square Garden in New York City for a week of concerts in June of 1977. We were able to score tickets because they were sold by mail order - the promoter's brilliant plan to circumvent the scalpers from getting the best seats. The downside, of course, was that we had no control where our seats would be. To our great surprise we received seats in the first tier of the Garden right next to the stage (stage left). Simply awesome seats! The last photo below shows the perspetive of where we were.


I shot Tri-X, Kodacolor II, and Panatomic-X. A whopping three rolls of film! Today I would easily snap off a thousand shots today at a concert. Boy, how times have changed.

I had a 50mm and 200mm lens and my Dad's Pentax body. Looking back at the photos now, I'm disappointed to see blurred shots and the graininess of the film. I kept the negatives in plastics sheets, but they still had tons of scratches and dirt on them. I discovered that the anti-scratch software on the Nikon Coolscan 4000 scanner would not work on the black and white images at all, so these shots were cleaned up entirely by hand - not the most fun Photoshop work.

I was amazed to see how much information there is on the web for this specific concert date. Personal accounts. Photos. Even audio from the entire concert! All these years I had no idea.

The first black & white photo of Jimmy Page was just as the show opened with "The Song Remains The Same" playing his famed double-neck Gibson guitar and sporting nice, blown-dry hair (that didn't last long). The color picture was taken during his extended guitar solo towards the end of the show. You can't see it, but he is wielding his bow above his head. During the solo he was touching the laser beam that was passing over his head. This scattered the light all over the arena. I remember at the time thinking it was a very cool effect and a novel use of the laser.

I know people might find this hard to believe, but I found the concert to be both one of the best shows I ever saw while also having the distinction of being the most boring at times (during the extended keyboard and drum solos). I think I would have appreciated those moments more now. Back then I was probably more interested in just hearing what I was familiar with from the albums. With age I've come to appreciate and enjoy the improvisation more.

I remember at the end of the show that the lights came up in the arena and no one left. The crowd continued to scream loud and unabated. After what seemed a VERY long time, the lights cut out and Jimmy starts playing those great notes from the beginning of "Heartbreaker." In looking at the play lists for all the shows during the week at the Garden, they didn't play this every night, so I think it was quite special to see them perform it. Great way to finish a Led Zeppelin concert.

I hope the die-hard Led Zeppelin fans find this article so they can enjoy the photos. I have more to post if there's any interest.

Go here for more first-hand accounts of this concert.