Back in 2005 we were photographing a series of bands at Bruce Starrenburg’s Light Box Studio in East Dundee. Remember, 2005 were days of film, and Light Box was the finest processing and printing lab in the business.
We would shoot upstairs in the studio loft, while Bruce processed the film downstairs in the lab. Not digital fast, but still amazing service for 2005.
We had recently photographed a couple of bands, and were looking at proofs with one of the band members and his wife Lori, when Lori said, “I wish we could do a photo shoot like that for my band”. ‘You’re in a band?” I asked? “Catfight”, she replied, “we play every week.” I had no idea. Before we knew it, we were scheduling a shoot for Catfight, which appears to still be playing regularly here in 2023.
The band worked hard and we all had a blast, going from several set and costumes changes. We photographed nearly 200 proofs, all on Fuji Astia 100F color reversal slide film. Studio lights used were four Photogenic Machine Studio Master II’s, firing through a couple of Calumet 48” soft boxes, a Westcott 40” umbrella, Photogenic Machine Studio Kick Lights and a Photogenic Machine Hair light. Cameras used were a Minolta XE-7 and a Minolta X-570 mounted on an MD-1 motor drive. We shot with Prime lenses consisting of a Kamero 100mm f2.8, a 58mm Rokkor F 1.2, and a 35mm Rokkor F1.8 for wide shots.
Below is a small sampling of the slides. These were all scanned full frame using a Minolta DiMage 5400 Scan Elite dedicated film scanner, with no enhancements or retouching. The final images did include some minor retouching, i.e., fixing wrinkles in the back drops, and small clean up. I could have used those, but I wanted you to see what the film looked like before any corrections were made. There is a magic about film that digital cannot reproduce.
Trust me, if they called, I would do this all over again. We had so much fun!
